Breathing life into 12 landmark London buildings
Simon Elliott and Auro Foxcroft London

Can London’s buildings feel?
 
Could the city become so charged with the Olympic spirit and sense of human excellence that the city’s architecture actually becomes animated and begins to move?
 

Artists working with community groups will interpret the tone, feel, emotions, play and actions of human excellence. Video projections will create the illusion that London’s buildings are breathing, feeling, leaning and turning. People’s feelings will move the buildings.
Breathing Humans Into Buildings will give people a unique spectacle, a fun empathising moment to remember, suitable for audiences of all ages and backgrounds.
 
We wish to bring a more complex subtle interpretation to large audiences.
The art of projected 2D image developed on 3D software, called 'Video Mapping' is moving forward.  
We have invited artists from several creative disciplines, chosen for their moving image, art installations, VJ and animation, empathy with broad audiences, subtle understanding of visual signalling, and power to “animate the inanimate”.
 
The artists are: John Waters, Pippilotti Rist, Andy Serkis, Clint Dyer, Claire Denis, Tony Oursler, Carlos Acosta, Todd Haynes, Wim Wenders, Fraser Ayres, Jenny Sealey, Clint Dyer, Barbara Cruger, Simon Elliott, Auro Foxcroft and Todd Solondz.
All share an ability to capture sensuous, visceral, enthusiastic human expressiveness for the streets of London. All engage with communities and people passing in the street across London.
 
The project will offer people a conduit to express their feelings about human excellence on a spectacular public scale. The work could be described as a “video blotting paper”- it will soak up emotions and then hang them out for all to see and respond to.
 
 

Project Blog

How do you make a building come alive?

3 September 2009

To see examples of what might happen when buildings come to life, click on the following link:

http://motionographer.com/2009/07/24/building-projection-round-up/

About the artist

Auro Foxcroft and Simon Elliott

 
Auro Foxcroft is Co-Chair of Ahh...Arts Igniting Minds and Project Director and creator of Village Underground London, a socially driven charitable organization that aims to encourage the production of new creative work and emerging cultural practitioners. A massive warehouse with tube trains on the roof as office space for artists and creatives. Home of Punch Drunk Theatre Company.
 
Simon Elliott is Director of Ahh...Arts Igniting Minds. Creative Producer and performer, using the arts to cross social and cultural boundaries, creating access and entitlement. He has worked with The RSC, National Theatre, Old Vic, Glasgow Citizens’, English Shakespeare Company and Lyric Hammersmith and Creative producer at the Jim Henson Creature Shop. Simon performed at the first London International Festival of Theatre and ran his own theatre company, which toured the world for the British Council.  He created work for Shakespeare’s Globe; the London Borough of Southwark; London Open House; Arts Council England, Creative Partnerships, Thames River Festival, Kensington Palace, Tower of London, and Carlos Acosta. Simon is the vision behind THE HILL, an exciting proposal for the Olympic Park.
 
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