SENSIBILIA

Art Commissions and Interventions – The FACT Centre

The art commissions and interventions for the FACT Centre have been focused in three main areas. These are ;
1. Works intrinsic to the fabric and design of the building
2. Works evolved as dynamic features within the building
3. Signature commissioned work.

This element of the programme is continuing to evolve through the close working relationship established between lead Artist Clive Gillman and Architects Austin-Smith: Lord through the regular Design Team meetings. To date this process has evolved a clear definition for the building skin and the interactive exterior lighting system. The details of this design will continue to be developed through the build process and will also begin to address the interventions in areas such as signage for the building, both internally and externally and how the balance of information and interaction is presented to visitors to the building.

This approach is also influencing and determining the look and feel of other elements which will reflect the aspirations of the Lead Artist and the principle of intrinsic artworks.
(i) The location and form of the ‘orientation wall’
(ii) The form of the entrances and thresholds to key spaces (Galleries 1 & 2, The Media Lounge, the Box)
(iii) The treatment of key surfaces (Foyer floor, Box and Galleries exterior walls, Entrance glazing)
(iv) The integration with public realm/public art in the immediate hinterland of the building.

External lighting

This project concerns the installation and control of the external lighting bars on the building skin. These lighting bars consist of 7 columns of LED lights, each the full height of the building rainscreen. Each column consists of a very narrow, but intense strip of lights, each in a pure colour taken from the TV test pattern. At the head of each column is a full tile (600 x 600mm) of LEDs which can be used to create an alphanumeric or logotype display.

Using a specially designed interface located in the orientation centre users will be able to switch between three modes of lighting display. These are clock, building data and audio. When in clock mode the external lighting will function as an active carillon, counting seconds, minutes, hours, days and months by incrementing the individual lighting units. An animated sequence will be generated every hour when in clock mode to mark time passing. Numeric characters will also be displayed at the head of each column. When in building data mode the lighting will reflect the information generated by the building management system providing a live readout of temperature, airflow and other elements of the buildings life. When in audio mode the external lighting will act like a volume meter, relaying the acoustic space of the building interior into a dynamic visual form of the exterior. On the interior control interface empirical data will be displayed alongside the graphical representation of the lighting system, while on the exterior of the building the lights will simply form coded rhythms and patterns.

Dynamic reflexive works

These works are also being evolved in response to developments managed by the Design Team, but comprise modifications and extensions to the building design to provide distinct feature elements. These works are being developed directly by the Lead Artist with certain exceptions where specialist elements or collaborative project opportunities emerge.

These concept has led to the development of the external lighting scheme, but also features ;

Reflex 1 (working title)

This project aims to use the CCTV system due to be installed in the building to provide feedback of the life of the building back to its users. It will involve the siting of a number of discrete video cameras at specific locations throughout the building to provide a dynamic exposure of the life and workings of the building. The displays for ‘reflex 1’ are all located in the busy public areas. The displays in the orientation point are designed to support visitors in visualising the building while other displays are designed to provide ambient textures which reflect the activity of these spaces. Cameras are currently planned for siting in the projection rooms (to show close-ups of working 35mm film projectors), the galleries and the BOX and on the roof (to bring the sunset over Liverpool bay into the heart of the building).

Sonic Reworking
A Greyworld installation

(Greyworld statement)
We have proposed to focus our installation on the usually permanent and immutable sounds attached to the FACT building through its constituent sound producing parts. Once isolated and identified, Greyworld would then tune these parts, as if each one were many voices in a section of a dispersed choir of the building, treating these as elements of a cohesive sonic whole. The sounds that the lift buttons make when pressed, the sounds the doors make when opened, the cash registers, the security card readers: these would become melodic parts of a building-wide composition. These elements would create gentle, often simple, cohesive sound when touched and stimulated, working in symphony with the other sonic parts. In order to be effective we would like this approach to inform the elements in the building, including the online areas, and indeed the answerphone sounds, mobile phone rings, radio commercials, etc.

Each physical element would contain sonic possibilities. As a human interacts with each element (either passively or actively) the device would produce one of its possibilities at the area of interaction. It is important to note that these enhanced sounds may remain unconsciously felt by most visitors to the FACT centre. To a large extent, this depends on the building wide composition itself, with the sound palette (both building wide and at each location, i.e in the lift) determining how ‘foreground’ an element becomes. For the large part though, these elements will contribute to a feeling of the building, its sonic identity, and an enhanced awareness of sound through the occasional foregrounding of usually ignored human activity. We want to create a reflective acoustic space. Whereas in the past we have attempted this through the articulation of the silent elements of urban space, allowing physical contact to initiate sound, this is a broader, more subtle treatment of a public space, and one with no easily detemined visual focus.



Other art interventions
Building documentation project

Artist Graham Parker has been commissioned to develop a work which will act as a documentary signature of the building project. This is to take the form of a text-based work. The texts will be generated from the user dictionaries of those closely involved with the building project. These dictionaries are repositories of all the unique words generated during the building process and form a fascinating image of the names, jargon and mis-spellings that are part of a project such as this. The words will be used to form part of the brise soleil across the south side of the building. The brise soleil forms a sun-shade to reduce solar gain in the building, and the texts will be applied to this to form a semi-opaque texture which will cast textual shadows into the building.

Signature work

In addition to the works outlined above it is felt that the building will be enhanced by some feature works which will be less ingrained within the building design and which will be permanent exhibits to complement the temporary gallery works. A meeting of the FACT board sub-group has sanctioned an approach to the Singh sisters (Amrit and Rabindra) to produce a specially commissioned lightbox work for the centre. Again this commission has been developed to provide a specific feature for the centre which will actively represent the city, its people and its cultural breadth to visitors to the building.

The theme for the work is based upon the external lighting colour scheme, one of the recurrent motifs of the building, which uses a sequence of colours based on the television test pattern.
The concept is to use this pattern as a backdrop to a series of small portraits of people involved with FACT and the building development. The portraits would be done in the Singh sisters own style, using stylised and allegorical imagery based on 17th century Mughal portraiture. These people would form an eclectic selection, perhaps deliberately confounding the perception of those who are traditionally involved with media arts. The final works would be reproduced as high quality transparencies for backlit display within the building.