This is a light and flex installation is a unique design for the exterior of Burley Lodge Community Centre. The purpose of the work was to draw attention to the exterior, in order to inspire conversation by local people and the centre staff and users about community, identity and creativity. This public debate is an important part of the centre’s development as the upper floor is used to support new social enterprise companies.

The work was inspired by the idea of mapping the streets of Burley, and the community concept of the boundaries and movement through the area.

Environmental concerns and design informed the work which is run by a time clock to minimise expense. It is made up of 20 circular wall lights with plastic opal diffusers, 10 inch in diameter so they can house low watt energy bulbs. They give off minimal light pollution.

The five different colours of flex (red, blue, yellow, green, orange) are synchronized with the colour of the lights and the cable clips. This gives the work its strong clean lines and make it visible day and night.

[View as Slideshow]

The project was developed over 18 months, with involvement from the local older peoples’ Healthy Living Walking Group, who helped collect plants from the surrounding area. The plants were chosen, apart from growing near by, on the basis that they had health giving properties.

Images were made using traditional flower pressing techniques and then scanned to create 23 high quality images. Each image was transformed in to one of twenty three, 1 minute long moving sequences.23-hours was shown on an arrangement of 23 LCD portrait 17” monitors. Each one minute sequence was repeated sixty times. This meant it would take 23 hours for the work to be shown in its entirety. Each day the complete 23 hour cycle would shift forward one hour, therefore taking 23 days to return to the start.

In this way the work had it’s own timing, meaning that if you came in to the building at the same time everyday for 23 days in a row you would always be greeted by a new moving wall of images. This was illustrated by a comment from the project manager based on site, who said that he’d “not seen that one before!” This was after it had been running non-stop for 8 months.

23 Hours (Installation Documentation) from Benedict Phillips on Vimeo. This short film documents the 23 screen LCD screen instillation in just over 6 minutes and was produced with me and on my behalf by jrpp.

Dandelion, Splay Fall and the other 21 films were made with the support of Tristan Summers, aftereffects specialist.