Tunnel Visions: Array

For one cold spring weekend this year, the Barbican put on a brilliant sound and light installation inside the Beech street tunnel.

Produced by 59 Productions, Array used 40 projectors and 40 speakers arranged on the sides of the tunnel to project detailed visualisations in time to Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Karawane. Hear more about how it was made.

A photo looking straight down the covered Beech Street. The photo is dark, with a projection of a solar system on the ceiling.

It seemed all the spectators wanted to cluster in in the centre, leaving the ends relatively clear for me to shoot from - and get a better view of the performance.

A photo looking straight down the covered Beech Street. The photo is dark, with white criss cross lights on the ceiling, receding into the distance.

A photo looking straight down the covered Beech Street. The entire ceiling is covered with a patchwork of bright projected colours.

I have it in my mind that mapping projections on to physical space is a hard problem - or at least time consuming to set up. Whilst some of the projections where fluid abstract forms, many of them made great use of the regular grid pattern of lights in the tunnel.

A photo looking straight down the covered Beech Street. The photo is dark, with red and blue lights on the ceiling, receding into the distance.

The installation was so specific to Beech street, I’m not sure it could go elsewhere - but I hope the Barbican does more things like this in the future.