Showing posts with label taktal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label taktal. Show all posts

Thursday, 26 May 2011

Taktal at Testbed 1

One of F's friends Macken curated a fantastic art show last Saturday called Taktal at Testbed 1. After hearing about it, loads of people have asked me when it's on until. Unfortunately it was a one day only affair, but just to make you jealous, here's what it was like....

The show was held at Testbed 1, a former dairy warehouse at Ransome Dock, on the Thames in Battersea. Macken, who works nearby as an architect, managed to persuade them to let him use the space for the show.

They had a bar on unicycle wheels

A magic mirror with a time delayed reflection (if you look closely, you can see I managed to turn around quickly enough to take a photo of the back of my head)

Table tennis!

And lots of umbrellas.

The umbrellas are going to be part of a big installation at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada Desert in August. For 2 quid you get to give an umbrella a name and personality. People at the festival then choose an umbrella, based on its personality, to shade them from the burning sun, and you can follow their progress online. And you get a vodka jelly too. Here is a mock up of how the final piece will look.

The main installation was held in the huge vaults of the dairy. The room was totally black when you entered, except for some tiny tiny lights strung from the ceiling. The gravel on the floor made your footsteps crunch, and every now and then, a low boom would emerge from the dark. Then, a bright light would flash from the centre of the room, illuminating a part of the space. As you moved around, you began to realise that the light flashes were in some way linked to the sounds, but not exactly, only sporadically. Then, two women in pink dresses started to sing a winsome song, weaving in and out of harmony. As they sang and walked around the room the lights would follow them, occasionally. Click on the photos to view properly




The finale of the day was a huge shadow puppet show, projected onto a floor-to-ceiling screen.