Sledge Blog

Nice present

Ganton Street Decorations

Anthony McCall

If you get a chance definitely pop down to the brilliant new exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery by Anthony McCall. The exhibition comprises three projection based installations and a couple of short films.

We spend lots of time at Sledge talking about complex and expensive projection ideas - 360 projection, projection onto waterfalls etc - but this is really simple, it is just about light and dark. It reminded me of when people used to smoke in cinemas creating solid looking cones of projected light. 

Visitors aren't sure if they are allowed to touch the light or not. Putting your hand through the light makes you feel like you are breaking a taboo, like touching the Mona Lisa. A bit like Anthony Gormley's cloud installation, in which people worried about bumping into each other, it brings out a strange kind of English politeness; you want to break the projection but you don't want to spoil it for other people. This exhibition though is highly interactive, go when it is quiet, walk through the beams of projected light and spend some happy moments leaning against the back wall looking back at the smoke filled prisms that bestride you.

When you read the biog in the gallery you find out that Anthony McCall was an artist in the 1970's then stopped for financial reasons and worked as a designer for twenty years and has now become an artist again. I love the idea of an artist mothballing their career for all those years, then getting back into it.

Good Look

Photos from JD & Clare's visit to the nice people at Yorkshire Tea.

Temporality

Over the past eight summers, the Serpentine Gallery’s pavilion program has become one of the best ideas in the art world – focusing on the public’s experience of temporary structures at the intersection of art and architecture. Every year, the gallery invites an international architect to design a temporary pavilion and the open brief has resulted in somewhat of a fantasy football league for architects, showcasing innovative and experimental structures they most likely wouldn’t get funding for otherwise.

Last weekend, I went to see this year’s design - a collaborative effort between artist Olafur Eliasson (behind the Weather Project in Tate Modern) and Norwegian architect Kjetil Thorsen

A steel and timber clad structure reminiscing a cross section between a shark attack and a giant spinning-top. A wide spiraling ramp winds twice around the exterior, rising from the lawns of the gallery and ending with a viewpoint over Kensington Gardens. The structure’s interior is supposed to function as a ‘laboratory’ for artistic/scientific public experiments. This temporary building does more than look pretty and keep the rain out. Actually, I wouldn’t say it was pretty at all. Its an odd looking structure you need to experience with your body and less with your eyes.

Within art, design and architecture, the current escalating trends seems to be temporary experiences and structures, experimenting with how space works and how people can affect a built structure as much as the structure can affect them.

Watch this space for an update of future temporary structures taking place around London.

Check out Olafur Eliassons’ studio website, which he calls a laboratory for spatial research

 

Height of Fashion

Clare, Jez and Karen have been helping Metro bring to life their title sponsorship of the Ski and Snowboard Show  at Olympia. Here are some slightly disturbing shots from photo iglu.

Get the message

In a fit of tidying I just uncovered the above list scribbled down at Interesting 2007 . These were discussed as the six different elements that can help ensure an effective presentation. It seems to me that they are a pretty good start point for anyone thinking about creating a brand experience.

To the Sword

In case you missed it, Saturday evening saw the continued and quite unfathomable revival in English rugby fortunes with the march of the national team into the Final of the World Cup at the expense of hosts France.

Following a number of hours of amusement baiting French friends, the smug-faced glee remained well into Sunday, helped in no small part by the site of very timid-looking Sebastian Chabal in a great piece of newspaper advertising that tapped nicely into the spirit of the nation, whilst continuing to rub salt into collective French wounds.

Wilkinson Sword can be applauded for taking full advantage of the association implicit in their name, reducing Chabal – the talismanic, caveman-like symbol of French solidity, passion and flair (some might say arrogance) – to his more youthful, much less menacing former self. This creative approach nicely parallels the removal of the French, conveniently via the boot of Mr. Wilkinson himself, from a tournament they looked to have a great chance of winning on home soil.

The snappy, humorous manner of the communication is also a great example of marketing being conducted in line with real-world happenings, playfully drawing people in to share the joke together whilst positioning Wilkinson Sword as central to the discussion and, importantly, hinting at the attributes of the product. Such a shame, Sebastian!

Experience the survey

A global survey on experiential marketing is being sponsored by the IXMA along with Brand Week and Ad Week. Join in here

The ease with which recorded properties can be copied is greatly enhancing the value of live, not just from a commercial point of view but also from a consumer perspective. The inherent value of recorded content seems to diminish as its ubiquity increases. Some how a scheduled episode of the Sopranos doesn’t seem quite as exciting when you know that you can watch any episode you like, when you like, through an on-demand channel. These changes mean that consumers are increasingly turning to live to get their kicks.

A magical book called Spectacle explores live happenings, experiences, events, festivals, parades, displays from around the world. When you work in this area it is easy to forget the wonder of live. Spectacle covers everything from Burning Man to Spain’s Tomatina festival via the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, the Kumbh Mela in India and Olympic opening ceremonies. One of the author’s is architect David Rockwell who is fascinated by the creative risk taking that the brevity of a spectacle demands; other contributors include Muhammad Ali, Quincy Jones and Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte. The book contains great insights for anyone charged with creating experiences, but beyond this Spectacle is a photography book and is worth picking up just for the pictures.