Output details

Hope Street Project

Interactive sound and light installation situated in and between Liverpool’s two cathedrals commissioned and funded by Arts Council England for Liverpool European Capital of Culture 2008.

The Hope Street Project – an Interactive sound and light installation - was a significant development of my long-term investigations into signal carrying lasers. Commissioned and funded by Arts Council England for Liverpool European Capital of Culture 2008, the work was situated in and between Liverpool’s two cathedrals, linking their towers with visible and invisible lasers. The research explored the use of lasers as a means of carrying signals between the buildings and connected the two spaces, and the people within, by voices and images relayed across Liverpool's Hope Street. Using custom software specially developed for the project I collected and stored voices collected from various groups and individuals in Liverpool which were then randomly recalled and played back into the spaces of each cathedral. The laser signals travelled along Hope Street linking the acoustic spaces both poetically and actually with a beam of light. The Hope Street Project led a further commission to create a laser link between Tate Liverpool and FACT, sharing the Nam June Paik retrospective exhibition in 2008. The Hope Street Project was one of only three major projects funded by the Arts Council England within Liverpool’s 08 Capital of Culture and featured within the official 2008 programme of the Liverpool Biennial. Affectionately called ‘Gods Washing Line’ by local people, it became a nocturnal landmark within its period of operation. A paper on the project was presented at Digital Aesthetic 2 international conference at the University of Central Lancashire and was published in the conference proceedings (ISBN: 978-1-901922-67-7). The project also formed one of the case studies cited within Dr. Simon Thorne’s successful PhD at LJMU for which I was Director of Studies.