Output details

Jurassic Light Years (a projected virtual environment)

Head’s overriding research theme resides in the areas of data visualisation, art experiences and illumination and asks the question: ‘How can data and information, often hidden, be visualised to create new understandings through experiential outputs?’

Jurassic Light Years, is a projected virtual environment that uses real-time 3D computer graphics to allow an audience to experience weather data and abstract imagery through multiple perspectives. Collaborating with accomplished painter Jeremy Gardiner, the protected coastline of Dorset is recreated through digital projection. This project challenges the notion of interactivity as being human-computer based, as the artwork responds to data fed directly from a live (web-based) source, creating an experience that reveals the hidden aspects of landscape.

Following the success of its initial showing as part of the Imaginalis exhibition at Chelsea Art Museum, New York City for six weeks in 2009, the project led to an Arts Council grant of £12K (£23K total project value) in 2010 (Light Years: Digital Coast) to support a more ambitious scale version of the project, which was presented in Poole, UK, and reached an audience of approximately 5,000 people. Further development led to the work being exhibited in the Edinburgh Printmakers Gallery as part of a group exhibition in 2010 and Phoenix Gallery, Leicester in 2012. The research project featured in a paper given by Head on painterly computer graphics, delivered at ISEA in Istanbul, 2011. The project also featured in Printmaking Today in 2011, and forms a chapter in a new Electronic Visualisation in Arts and Culture (Springer) 2013.