A brand-new Curated Place commission in cooperation with SPECTRA Aberdeen, Seb Lee Delisle's Lightning Catchers is a large scale laser-projected interactive experience visitors on the tower of Bury Parish Church. When it is your turn to play you walk up to the building and take the 2m long lightning rod that is attached via a long wire to an electricity receptacle box. Holding the lightning rod in the air and wait for lightning to strike. Tendrils of sparks appear at the top of the building and before you know it, a huge bolt comes crashing down towards you. Frantically you move your lightning rod closer to the base of the arc, if you miss it, the lightning disappears and you wait for the next bolt.
 

Seb Lee-Delisle is a digital artist and speaker who uses computers to engage with people and inspire them. As an artist, he likes to make interesting things from code that encourage interaction and playfulness from the public.

Laser Light Synths won the 2016 Lumen Interactive Prize. He won 3 Microsoft awards in 2013, and he was Technical Director on Big and Small, the BBC project that won a BAFTA in 2009.

Light Harp is a collection of kinetic light sculptures that create analogies to the played string of an instrument. The style of playing can be thought of as a drone, a long continuous sound or rather its visual counterpart. Instead of a sounding box, Friedlander uses sympathetic strings arranged in semi parallel fashion attached to the base cord rising vertically or at other angles spreading out around the space.

Lit with Friedlander's own invention, the Chromastrobic light, the amplitude of the waves will appear as a translucent volume swept out in space by the vibrating movement. Deceiving the persistence of vision this lightwork must be seen to be believed.

Paul Friedlander is a scientific artist and a light sculptor with a degree in physics and maths from Sussex University. His works use persistence of vision, a property of how light is perceived combined with movement to create a three dimensional kinetic body of light in sculptural form that is both beautiful and interactive.  Paul has exhibited internationally at numerous art and science museums and festivals spanning four continents and fifteen countries.

‘Nomad’ is a light and sound installation born from the Arts Council England and Curated Place supported ‘Collective Collaborations’ project which brings together three separate artist collectives from Bury, Aberdeen & Blackpool to create new work.

The installation looks at the transitional movements of the artists as they move from location to location for their 6-month project and focuses on the nomadic qualities of the traveller and what they take and leave behind on their journeys.

Aptly located at the Transport Museum, the installation will bring together the award-winning artists and create a sound and light piece projected onto the old bus stop in the yard, which will project the artists ideas and thoughts on a transient life.

https://www.curatedplace.com/collaborative-collectives/

The Reader is large six foot data visualisation sculpture of the artist Stanza wearing a hoodie reading a book. The sculpture becomes a pulsing algorithmic heartbeat of living data. It is made with custom made digital software and hardware generating live events inside the sculpture. The data body acts to reposition a future view of ourselves when embedded technologies will become part of our everyday lives.

The artwork explores new ways of thinking about life, the emergence and interaction within public space, and how this affects the socialisation of space. It uses open data and new technologies to question audiences’ experiences of real-time events. We live in a world of infobesity, we are bombarded with information that is made malleable and shaped to give it meaning.

STANZA is an award winning London based artist whose practice includes installations, netart, public art, generative data driven art, paintings and prints. His work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Tate Britain and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

‘Compositional Automata’ is a Curated Place commission supported by Arts Council England that combines research and development, live performance and festival platforms to complete the next step in the ever evolving project. Collaborating with seminal electronica group Plaid, Felix will develop a new dual functional machine that can be programmed by new composers and shown at festivals and exhibitions as a stand alone light and sound sculpture.

The work will be shown as an installation in the Gallery throughout the two day festival. On the 21st October Felix and Plaid will perform original new scores with the machines and create an ambient mixture of sound , light and machinery that will dazzle and excite the ENLIGHTEN Bury audience in the stunning gallery spaces of the Art Museum prior to their headline concert in Bury's Parish Church.

Felix Thorn builds machines for art installations, live performance, commercials, theatre accompaniment, and shop window displays. Felix specialises in de-constructing real-life objects and creating new experiences with movement, music and light.

Felix's Machines were initially conceived in an experiment aiming to facilitate live music by transforming sound into a three-dimensional visual show. As an ongoing project, the music-performing machines built by Felix do not intend to match human potential. Instead they exist to test the advantages of mechanical instruments alone.

Unlike other artworks that we are advised to keep distance, this sculpture invites you to touch it. With reference to the ancient cycladic idols, this black head is standing dark, like an extraterrestrial visitor, waiting for an encounter. In response, it will emit cold blue and violet light through hundred optical fibers that are fitted in its surface. At the same time a soundscape will be generated based on the movements of the hands that are touching the sculpture. As the visitor interacts and get connected with the artwork, a special algorithm is calculating the amount of engagement and transforms the lights to warmer red and orange colors.

“Touch” is a metaphor on human and technology relationship. It is trying to explore the difficulties of human- machine interaction. A simple interaction like touch is sometimes very difficult to achieve. People may hesitate to touch the sculpture (especially in a gallery-exhibition environment). When they finally do it, some may feel uncomfortable by the sculpture reaction and other may feel attracted and charmed. After so many interactive devices that surround us in everyday life, how used are we in a human-machine interaction?

Yiannis Kranidiotis is new media artist and musician whose work explores the relationship between light and sound by creating spaces and experiences where both coexist and interact. He is also interested in investigating the inseparable relationship between science and art. This requires a cross-disciplinary work with sound, visual arts, coding, electronics and physics. His work has been presented in many festivals and exhibitions like Made in NY Media Center (New York), B-Seite Festival (Germany), Rome Media Festival, ISEA 2016 (Hong Kong), ISEA 2015 (Vancouver), MADATAC (Madrid), Lumen Prize Global Tour,  Athens Digital Arts Festival, Onassis Cultural Center (Athens), LUNDA Gallery (St. Petersburg, Russia). Many websites and magazines have published articles about his work including “Google Cultural Institute“, “The Creators Project“, “Arduino.org”, “Gizmodo“,  “Open Culture“, “Hyperallergic“, “Bigthink” and “Konstvärlden”.  He has also composed music for short films and theatre.

He has a BS in Physics from University of Partas and M.Sc. in Optics from Essex University. He lives and works in Athens.

Kranidiotis was a 2016 participant in Curated Place's EU Culture Fund supported ENLIGHT network with Manchester School of Art, I/O Lab (Stavanger), and Fondazione Mondo Digitale (Rome).

A four-meter high, 360˚ projection globe invites audiences to have their picture mapped into live animations that swarm around the globe alongside movies, audio, graphic effects, pictures, text and even Tweets.

Lit with intense translucent colours, projected video images, animations and visual effects that spin magically around the outside of the globe enhanced by multi-channel music from hidden speakers.

Chris Squire is the co-founder and director of Impossible Arts (www.impossible.org.uk) - a well established participatory and digital arts organisation creating extraordinary experiences in everyday locations and developng innovative and high quality engaging, interactive and participatory arts projects mixing visual arts with digital media technologies.

Based at The Watershed in Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire, Chris’ roots are in the performing arts having produced a series of strongly visual and richly musical touring performance pieces.

Now having moved beyond theatre, his work is at the forefront of participatory events, digital technologies and installations. Using digital and visual arts approaches to create our participatory or interactive artworks. He regularly works in collaboration with leading artists and organisations from many disciplines and his work has been seen across Europe.

Chris is a creative professional with over 25 years experience in producing a wide range of participatory arts projects and educational workshops.

Poco Apollo is a generative music piece by Icelandic musician/programmer Halldór Eldjárn. It is built upon NASA’s Apollo Space mission photo archive: around 15.000 photos taken on earth and in space. Poco Apollo generates musical soundscapes for each image in the library. It uses common computer vision algorithms to determine the mood of the picture as the input to the music composition engine.

I created the piece to open up this incredible photo library. The mood in the pictures is somewhat unusual as some of them quite casual unlike the most famous and polished pictures we are so used to seeing, from these missions. Some are even quite bad, but still they are taken during one of the most incredible journeys mankind has embarked upon and thus become mysterious and exciting. The web app selects pictures at random and the browser then starts playing the soundtrack for that picture. Poco Apollo is accessible online at http://bit.ly/PocoApollo.

A live event will be a live performance of a handful of these songs. Daníel Helgason guitarist will join Halldór onstage to interpret the songs along with self-playing robotic harp.

Halldór Eldjárn is an Icelandic drummer/musician/programmer. His live show consists of live performing robotic instruments which he has built, his brother Úlfur Eldjárn on the MIDI-based saxophone, synthesizers and all nicely tied together with Halldór's live drumming. Soundscape-y electronic tones, yet rhythmic. Guaranteed to blow minds and soothe ears!

Halldór's other projects are most notably the electro dance band SYKUR, which he founded in 2008. Úlfur is an active soundtrack composer, performer and member of the Apparat Organ Quartet, and played with the legendary alternative/krautrock band KANADA in the early 2000's.

An EP is scheduled to be released late 2017 alongside with further live stunts.

Halldór Eldjárn is working with Curated Place with the support of the Nordic Council Of Ministers as part of the ongoing 'Handmade Sounds' programme.

We at Curated Place are teaming up with Bury Art Museum to deliver a weekend of Light and Music.  Building on the success of the popular Bury Light Night we are bringing an array of local and international artists to transform spectacular Bury landmarks for an amazing weekend for all the family to enjoy.  Be prepared to be dazzled with light and sound.

Full programme now available on www.enlightenbury.co.uk

Since the mid-1960’s Maurizio Nannucci has been one of the leading figures of European contemporary art. His work explores the interrelations between language, writing and visual images, and employs a wide variety of medium.

The commission for the circular foyer balcony reads as a cycle with the words: DIFFERENT LANGUAGES SAME PLACES DIFFERENT PLACES SAME CULTURE DIFFERENT CULTURES SAME HORIZONS

Artists Hannah Ayre & Amanda Yates create atmospheric UV environments that will light the streets at Enlighten Bury 2017. Parabolas delivers immense UV geodesic structures that blur the lines between art and mathematics at a stunning scale.

Hannah Ayre is a participatory artist working with audiences where the boundaries between art, craft, perfor- mance & collaboration are blurred. Works range from small craft items to large scale outdoor sculpture, installations, performance and events. The materials she uses vary widely including ceramics, textiles, found materials, though the common thread in her work is collaboration. Work may be realised through collab- oration with fellow artists, with the input of volunteers or through workshops with formal and informal learning groups. Ayre’s projects often take place in unconventional settings, by taking the work out of the gallery removing some of the barriers to participation.

Amanda Yates origins are in illustration but with 19 years experience of developing and implementing creative projects with communities, schools & businesses has enabled her to evolve a diverse portfolio ranging from animation, exhibition curation to 3-D sculptures, smoothly blending the lines between academia and the creative process. Working as an Educational Artist in Residence, her projects are closely cultivated with the whole school as a community, working with children, families and staff to create unique opportunities for schools to work alongside artists, galleries and societies.

Parabola have been developed with our partner SPECTRA Aberdeen and with the help of numerous volunteers. Huge thanks to all that have assisted developing the works.

In the weeks leading up to the festival artist Jenny Dockett will deliver a series of lead in schools workshops with Webster Primary School, Park View and Our Lady of Lourdes Primary teaching children about platonic solids, electronics and rapid prototyping before creating an interactive lantern installation from their contributions. The lanterns created will then be returned to the children following the festival.

Families will also be able to visit the Bury Archives to make their own lantern with Jenny to take away (materials cost applies).

Jenny Dockett is an award winning artist and educator, studied Environmental Microbiology at the University of Aberdeen and has previously been featured at many high profile science and education festival programmes including the Orkney Science Festival and the Abu Dhabi Science Festival.

Running for four nights between the 8th–11th February 2018 SPECTRA, Aberdeen’s stunning Festival of Light, will return to celebrate the Scottish Year of Young People through this year’s theme ‘Play the Night’. Bringing together leading international artists with Scottish collaborators and developing new talent the festival will deliver a four-day light and music spectacular. Using new technologies and tools to animate The Merchant Quarter, the Kirk of St Nicholas, and Marischal College, we will also expand to two new sites in the city centre and launch a new music festival as part of the programme to accommodate the overwhelming popularity of the event. 

For further details and updates www.spectraaberdeen.com