News

Light Years Projects are pleased to announce the culmination of their Arts Council Award, a month long exhibition of their new work Light Years: Coast. Showing at the Lighthouse, Poole’s Centre for the Arts from the 29th May to the 3rd July 2010.

The will be two pieces of work on show, presenting two locations on the Dorset coast. These two perspectives of the Jurassic Coast are the culmination of over two years of development. Shown as two projections, the audience experience the coast in flight in one piece and as a boat trip in the other.

Exhibition is open from 10 to 8pm daily.

Light Years Projects have been awarded an Arts Council, Grant for the Arts. This award will allow us to finish the development of our latest project of the Jurassic Coast, including an exhibition in June 2010 at the Lighthouse Centre for the Arts, Poole, UK. Additionally, we will be developing our work further for a large scale project, involving national partners.

For more details see the press release. Press Release 29th Jan 2010

Jeremy Gardiner presented at this year’s Electronic Visualisation and the Arts London conference, (July 6th-8th 2009). The presentation about the work of Light Years Projects was made to an audience of academics, artists and industry representatives attending this annual conference.  EVA London is a conference of the Computer Arts Society, a specialist group of the British Computer Society and has a focus on visualisation for arts and culture. It is part of an international series of conferences.

In the exhibition will be a preview of the developing project, Light Years: Jurassic Coast. Anthony Head said, “We’re keen to expose our developing work to this critical audience. It’s a chance for us to test out new ideas and get feedback”.

The photo, shows the some of the artists involved the in EVA exhibition, including Anthony Head and Jeremy Gardiner.

March 5 – April 4, 2009
Imaginalis
Artists: Jeremy Gardiner, Anthony Head, Nick Lambert, Jan Rafdal

Presented by the Project Room for New Media at the Chelsea Art Museum

Light Years Projects features in the exhibition called Imaginalis. This collaborative exhibition by European artists brings together interactive installations alongside multi-media, painting and print work firmly routed in the rich tradition of modern landscape artists, the exhibition is the culmination of a close collaborative partnership between the four artists.

The Jurassic Coast, a UNESCO world heritage site in Dorset, England, is the inspiration for evocative paintings and prints that blur the line between representation and abstraction. Viewing the coast from the land, sea and air layers of color convey sensations, changes in the weather and seasons. The working method behind the pictures, scouring, building accretions of paint, collaging, and sanding down, echo the history of the ninety miles of ancient coastal landscape we see today. Like the geological spectrum of the coast, these images are stratified, creating distinct bands of paint and color in complex layers built up over eons.

Jurassic Light Years further explores the coastline in the context of a dynamic and time-based virtual environment. The installation uses hybrid techniques that combine painting, drawing, satellite data and ambient sound with immersive virtual reality through computer programming. This work features natural systems, such as changing weather, sea and geological erosion, over time. The dynamic qualities of this interactive installation best convey the succession of changing climates and landforms during its 250 million year old history.

By contrast Oculus is an installation that focuses on the human desire to measure and quantify the passing of time to make sense of the eras of change. Taking its form from the rose windows of European medieval cathedrals the jewel colors of the stained glass are projected to create an ethereal animated installation. Oculus subtly captures movement over time, its circular form echoes that of many ancient calendars and clocks. Embedded in the roundels of the window are the signs of the Zodiac, the plan of Stonehenge, the Nebra star-disc, the Aztec calendar, Copernicus’s view of the solar system, and at the centre, the great clock at Hampton Court, the royal palace of King Henry the Eighth. The piece connects the beliefs, discoveries and world-view of the cultures that sought to capture time and place and frame it.

Light Years: Jurassic Coast was recently previewed at the Mapping the Coast exhibition at the Dorset County Musuem. The project, currently under development, features the UNESCO World Heritage Site that covers 95 miles of the Devon and Dorset coastline.

In accordance with Dorset County Museum’s mission to foster critical thinking about today’s world through art, The Mapping the Coast exhibition explores multiple perspectives across time and place challenging the audience to contemplate issues of representation of time and our place in the universe.

The picture shows Jeremy Gardiner describing the work, alongside the Executive Director of the Dorset County Musuem, Jon Murden.

Jeremy and Anthony have recently given a presentation of their work to a delegation from Taiwan.   The delegation, led by Dr Jiun-Chuan Lin Professor of Geography, (the Geographical society of China) and Professor Ping-hui Liao, (Director General Department of Humanities and Social Sciences), were on a fact finding trip to the United Kingdom to discover new ways of informing a global audience about the unique characterisitcs of the archipelago of Penghu in Taiwan.  Aware of the work of Light Years Projects on the Jurassic Coast they wanted to find out more…

Penghu is an archipelago made of up 64 islands located in the southeastern part of the Taiwan Straits. These islands have a total of 320 kilometers of shoreline, and together they constitute Taiwan’s only island county. They were developed long ago, and they offer different moods and sights in different seasons thanks to such factors as their geographic environment, climate, cultural resources, and natural ecology.