Type and hit ENTER

Commonly used tags...

Brighton Festival Brighton Fringe Brighton Pride British Sea Power Cinecity Lewes Psychedelic Festival Locally Sourced Lost & Found Love Supreme Festival Nick Cave Poets Vs MCs Politics Rag'n'Bone Man Record Store Day Save Our Venues Six Of The Best Source Virgins Streets Of Brighton Street Source Tattoos The Great Escape Tru Thoughts Unsung Heroes
  • Home
  • News
  • Previews
  • Reviews
  • Features
  • Food
  • Tickets
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Advertise
  • Home
  • News
  • Previews
  • Reviews
  • Features
  • Food
  • Tickets
  • Contact
    • Contact
    • Contribute
    • Advertise
Features, Previews

Alternate Realities 2019

Oct 12, 2019
-
Posted by Ben Miller

Between 1963 and 1977, the Aylesbury Estate, in Walworth, south-east London, was built as a mammoth residency that would house 7,500 residents at its peak. Often declared Europe’s largest housing estate, it went through significant decline during the 1980s and 1990s, perhaps compounded by Tony Blair making his first speech as Prime Minister there in 1997, doing little to improve the perception of the estate as a symbol of failed social housing in a rueful address alluding to various elements of a broken Britain.

“It’s always portrayed as a very sort of gritty and deprived area,” says Darren Emerson, an artist with local ties who has returned to the estate to create a novel VR documentary, Common Ground, blending archive film, interviews, drone photography and 360-video. “It fascinates me. I’m a south Londoner so I’ve always been aware of this estate.”

The challenge, says Emerson, was to tell a complex story using technology that was, to some extent at least, new to him and the team he worked with. Looming diggers enhanced the urgency, accelerating the disappearance of the history they have attempted to capture. “The estate is going through a regeneration,” he explains. “All of the blocks that you see are going to be knocked down, and new flats are going to be built.

“I hope people understand the sense of betrayal that people feel. A lot of people here are leaseholders – that means that they bought their flats, they’re not social housing tenants. But now they’re being forced to move and given a Compulsory Purchase Order. That means that whatever the local authority – or the housing association, in this case – offers them, they have to accept. They have to move on. What happens to those people who used to live here?”

One of the processes Emerson used was photogrammetry – a part-science, part-art approach of recording, measuring and interpreting photos and patterns of electromagnetic radiant imagery and other phenomena. Choosing small areas of the estate, such as flats and stairwells, the artists have methodically taken thousands of photos, feeding the pictures into software to build a 3D model of the space. “Like most normal documentaries, you’re able to use archive material in a very traditional way,” he adds. “You cut to it, you use it to illustrate points that people are making – but one of the challenges we had is how to do that in 360 when you’re in an immersive environment where you can’t cut to a screen of 2D material. One of the solutions we had to that was to use projection mapping on the environment itself.”

Although the work premiered at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival and has already won an award for immersive storytelling in China, the team are also holding a private view on the estate. Its most meaningful effect might yet be in influencing decision makers and urban planners of the future. “We wanted to bring the piece back to the residents and engage with the community,” says Emerson. “We want this to get to the communities that it might really speak to.”

Two equally intriguing works accompany Common Ground at Lighthouse over the next week or so. My Mother’s Kitchen is an eight-minute audio documentary sharing the intimate memories of eight LGBTQI+ storytellers, created by Australia-based performer, writer and producer Maeve Marsden and Tea Uglow, the Creative Director for Google’s Creative Lab in Sydney.

Echo, by Georgie Pinn, is an interactive installation that aims to enhance our empathy by allowing us to see someone else use our eyes, lips and tongues through the use of a touchscreen, animation and facial tracking technology. The work won the Best Digital Experience category at this year’s Sheffield Doc/Fest.

Alternate Realties, Lighthouse, Brighton, Saturday 12th – Sunday 20th October. Admission free, 12pm-6pm. Supported by Arts Council England, the show will tour to HOME, Manchester and London’s Barbican.

Words by Ben Miller. Images courtesy the artists.

Oct 12, 2019
Email
Ben Miller
Ben Miller is a SOURCE feature writer and reporter.
← PREVIOUS POST
Frank Skinner Review
NEXT POST →
Care(less) Review
Mailing List

Recent Posts
  • Two Decades Of Funk Fire With Jalapeno Records
    Jan 18, 2021

    A new compilation celebrates 20 years of funk and soul from world-renowned Brighton label Jalapeno Records.

  • Hansel and Gretel? | Brighton Source
    Hansel and Gretel? Review
    Dec 18, 2020

    A postmodern pantomime with an unrelaible narrator. Outdoors with comedy, dance, camp actors, plenty of fun. On two levels: laughs for kids and jokes for adults

  • Artists Open Houses 2020
    Dec 5, 2020

    After cancelling the May edition, Artists Open Houses tell us what it's like to be back with a December festival that is open to visitors in person for eight days.

  • Cinecity 2020 previewed by Brighton Source
    Cinecity 2020
    Nov 17, 2020

    From the North Laine to Mongolia, Cinecity's lineup is typically eclectic and original this year - catch it before the city's key film festival ends.

  • Macbeth Review
    Nov 2, 2020

    Macbeth in Brighton. One-act play with Scottish Gaelic sounds by This Is My Theatre. Power, ambition, murder, blood. The woods are moving.

  • Lost & Found: Poison Girls
    Nov 2, 2020

    As part of our retrospective series on local bands we look back at the hugely influential and ever-challenging anarcho-punk collective Poison Girls.

  • The Rose Hill | Brighton Source
    Save Our Venues – The Rose Hill
    Oct 26, 2020

    We spoke to the team at the Rose Hill to find out how a series of new creative projects is helping this unique Brighton venue to cope with the current crisis.

  • Spillage! Review
    Oct 19, 2020

    This one-person, one-act play is giddy, funny and seriously entertaining. An odyssey through the madness of corporate pressure on our mental health.

Website developed in Brighton by Infobo
Copyright © Brighton Source 2009-2020
Alternate Realities 2019 - Brighton Source