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I Want To Live In A City with XL Video
XL Video supplied projection for public artist Martin Firrell’s ‘I Want To Live In A City . . .’ installation work, beamed along the wall of the steps leading up to the National Gallery as part of the Trafalgar Square Festival 06. It’s the first time a contemporary public art work has been projected onto the building.
Firrell is known as Britain’s most prolific public artist, and was commissioned by the Mayor of London’s office to produce the work. His socially engaging text-based art confronts and explores a host of topical political issues, the right of self-expression, cultural diversity, fair and truthful government and many more directions.
‘I Want To Live In A City . . .’ project was produced by Firma Arts & Media, under the technical direction of Kamal Ackerie, who work across a board spectrum of new and mixed media, art and music installations. Ackerie has used XL Video for several of their previous projection and video projects and says: “They are excellent - I wouldn’t use anyone else.” He’s recently worked with Firrell on a projected installation work at Tate Britain which was a resounding success, and through which Firrell also realised the power and versatility of the medium of projection.
Firrell and Ackerie first scoured the Square for suitable surfaces for this one and discovered the plinth casing the steps leading up to the entrance of the National Gallery. The Gallery is not part of the Square, so they then had to get special permission from them to project onto and from their property, before which Firrell was also required to create mock ups of the artwork he intended to use. This artwork had to physically fit the space and also into the overall curation of the festival’s creative director Bradley Hemming.
He came up with q wish list comprising 38 sentences starting with the words ”I want to live in a City . . .“ The basic structure of the statements reflects how cities attract immigration, how that produces an energy, how the environment is in constant motion and how it’s always aspiring to be better. He presented the texts, and everyone was very keen for the project to proceed, after which XL became involved.
The account was handled by XL director Des Fallon, assisted by Jo Beirne. They supplied two Barco R18 ELM Director machines, doubled up, using DVI signals from a Macintosh G5 server for the show, giving a pixel resolution of 1280 x 19024. The projectors were located 16 metres away from the wall on a special platform, and the final image was 20 ft wide. The show looped through the 38 pieces of text.
To morph between sentences Firrell used a series of animated red dots, which matched the banners hanging outside the gallery. “I wanted the process to be sympathetic with the building and to be graciously applied,” he says.
The installation ran from 10pm to midnight over two evenings and was a huge critical success. Firrell is already planning his next projection work which its to do with heroes.
30th August 2006
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