Amiens – Blanche Nuit

I recently visited Amiens, France to help these guys out http://www.themetahub.com/

As part of a group of about 20 people, we filmed events by camera phone or hand held camera, that were happening around the city and then sent the videos, about 30 seconds in length, back to the ‘meta hub’.

The films were then edited by their team and projected onto a many sided cube sculpture, therefore providing a mash up of the night in one place.

By day:

  

And by night:

Here are some examples of other works around the city:

    

  

My favourite piece was the one above on the right.

You had to queue up for about 10 minutes to see the work, which in itself added some atmosphere to the event as all the other pieces you could just stumble across.

Firstly you entered a room which was completely black and then strobe lights began at the opposite end of the room, so people began to walk towards them. You then entered into a second room and the strobes stopped for a few seconds. The lights fully came on and you could see you were in a room, surrounded by life size sculptures of naked men, from the knees up on plinths. Their faces were dripping.

The strobes then started up again at a fast pace and it was hard to walk around without walking into a sculpture or an actual person.

I thought that the whole experience was so immersive for the audience. It was quite a simple idea but it seemed to me to be the most interesting use of digital media of Blanche Nuit. Personally I was terrified by the flashes of the sculptures and it reminded me of Doctor Who, however a lot of the children found it exciting and were peering through the door to see peoples reactions as they were in there.