´óÏó´«Ã½

Chris Pike has been leading a team of our trainees and young researchers building an exciting installation for this weekend's Anti Design Festival- here's the story of how the project's gone in hs own words- images by team members:

Several months ago, Brandon Butterworth, our chief scientist, snuck in at the start of a meeting of ´óÏó´«Ã½ R&D trainees to propose a little extra-curricular project. He'd been chatting with Neville Brody, the influential designer and head of Research Studios, who recently redesigned bbc.co.uk's . Neville was organising a design festival to be held in East London in September and was keen to get us involved. And Brandon thought "What a great opportunity to put the skills of our younger engineers to the test and allow our technology to be applied in new creative ways." And what we failed to think was "If we commit to this we're not going to have any free evenings or weekends for months on end." So we foolishly jumped at the challenge.

The event is the which opens tomorrow in East London's Redchurch area. Our team of 11 R&D volunteers have collaborated with to produce an interactive work that is installed at Londonnewcastle project space for the duration of the festival. This piece is called , in reference to the chaotic creative technique popularised by William Burroughs and later David Bowie. It aims to be a living beast that sits in the 'salon' area of the gallery, providing a performance space and responding to everything it sees and hears within.

Ìý

Jon McKinnell calibrates the imagery for the installation. Photo by Rod Hodgson

Dave and Ryszard of CL&M have constructed a stage and furniture for the room in their raw aesthetic style, into which they have build a 10 speaker sound system. Around this we have built a system that generates an archive of audio-visual content, containing submissions from ADF's contributing artists and footage captured automatically during the festival events. Clips are pulled from this archive, cut-up and chaotically pasted into a three-dimensional ambisonic soundscape and onto a pulsating projected sphere.

Ìý

Custom speaker enclosures as well as screens are assembled for the installation. Photo by Becky Gregory-Clarke

We have also generated four connected interactive digital pieces, which are mounted on the walls of the salon. They all use cameras and microphones to observe the activity in the space. Each one allows visitors to mess about with the selected clips from the archive. Their movements and sounds are connected to the main projection and sound system. This allows everyone in the room to collaborate to manipulate a set of archive clips to produce a new dynamic form.

Ìý

Once the kit is installed, the lights are dropped and the code trialled in it's new installation.Photo by Becky Gregory-Clarke

This project hasn't been done at the expense of our proper ´óÏó´«Ã½ engineering research, we've still been doing our day jobs. But once we clock out we've been diving straight into the world of ADF. Many an evening and weekend has been spent camped out in Centre House meeting rooms, surrounded by speakers and displays, stressing over specifications, bickering about coding style, and panicking about the immense amount of work that still needs doing. We've been kept going by an almost constant supply of falafel and the knowledge that it will all be worth it when it's finished.

In the last two weeks our evenings have been spent in and out of Redchurch St, drilling, hanging, wiring and tweaking. It's been amazing to see it all come together with the rest of the festival and even more amazing to see it actually work. There have been times when it seemed easier just to pack our bags and leave, but I'm glad we persevered.

Ìý

The gallery install has been preceded by weeks of intensive development in the labs. Photo by Max Leonard

We are proud of what we have achieved and would like to invite you to visit the Anti Design Festival which runs from 18th-26th September. The piece will be exhibited at 28 Redchurch St, London, E2 7DP from 11am-5pm.

Huge thanks and congratulations to everyone inolved in the R&D team:

Chris Baume
Robert Dawes
Rebecca Gregory-Clarke
Thomas Heritage
Roderick Hodgson
Max Leonard
David Lewis
Jonathan McKinnell
Martin Nicholson
Chris Pike
Alia Sheikh

Also to Charlesworth, Lewandowski & Mann for what has been a great collaboration.

There are lots of other events going on as part of ADF. More information can be found at:

Ìý

Ìý