This piece is another collaboration between Ross Ashton and myself. It was commissioned for Enchanted Parks 2010 in Gateshead.
The piece is a short projection and sound installation which focussed on transforming a bowling pavilion into a series of fantasy structures, palaces and locations taken from six different fairy and popular tales from different parts of the world.
I decided that the sound for each different story-world would contain hints of their origin as well as the take itself. Aladdin for example, contains a combination of Chinese and Middle Eastern instrumentation, The Snow Queen contains rhythms and instruments that hints at Northern shamanic traditions, The Little Mermaid speaks in Danish and expresses something of her longing to go beyond the waves - the central tenet of the story. (People who know my work will also spot this as a deliberate quote from an earlier piece of mine, "Contours".)
We also decided to have some irreverent fun along the way!
The biggest challenge was dealing with snow and sub-zero temperatures. The snow altered the building layout which impacted on the mapping. From a personal perspective, I spent much of my time up to my knees in snow when installing and lining up the projector and installing the sound equipment required a certain amount of exposing park structures by digging with gloved hands, but it was all worth it!
The video below of the piece was our archive footage taken onsite. The temperatures meant our standard camera failed to work so we had to use a different lower quality camera to shoot it for our reference. This is the footage we share with you now.
