Projection and digital art specialist Ross Ashton of London based The Projection Studio created two spectacular projection works in Wolverhampton, west Midlands UK for the inaugural Wolverhampton Enchanted City event, which attracted up to 8000 people each evening into the city centre Ashton was commissioned to produce the works by Wolverhampton City Council following his work at the first ever Enchanted City ‘pilot’ event at Horncastle, Lincolnshire earlier in the year. Ashton is developing this unique event concept together with Brighton based Robin Morley of Magnetic Events, who also produced this show.
The 15 metre tall images were beamed onto two well-known local landmarks – the 1920s style Barclays Bank building in St Peter’s Square, and the Wulfrana Street entrance to the University of Wolverhampton around 100 metres away. Ashton once again collaborated with sound artist Karen Monid who created a dynamic bespoke soundtrack based on Anglo Saxon poetry about the Garden of Eden which was read by a specialist in Old English language that she sourced and recorded. The images were all inspired by medieval manuscripts together with patterns based on the shape and geometry of the building. The images were produced using a single Christie Roadster S+20K projector located on top of a specially built tower close to the building, fitted with a 1.2 – 1 short-throw lens. Content for the three minute loop was played back from a MacBook Pro running Millumin software, which is perfect for single projector shows like this.
The show at the University entrance – projected onto the imposing 1930s building – was designed to be a complete contrast to the pastoral and reflective tone of St Peter’s Square. Generator was hi-energy all-action animation based on the flow of ideas, knowledge and energy associated with learning. Set to a pumping dance track, which turned the atmosphere of the space almost into a joyous public rave, the building’s frontage was transformed into a fantasy-style generator with frantically turning cogs emitting oozing steam and flying sparks, together with random objects flying across the surface representing some of the disciplines taught there. These included cameras (film), keyboards (music) and even a flying cow (agricultural sciences) all with a colourful spacey background of flying stars and galaxies.
