LIGHTSTREAM, Fore Street, Exeter, Fri 14 & Sat 15 February at 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Fifty-foot dancers pirouetting across buildings, exotic vines creeping up the ancient walls of a medieval hall, top hats spinning across shops in the arcade and interactive visual trickery will be just some of the cornucopia of treats in store for people taking an evening stroll in Exeter’s Fore Street starting on Valentine’s night.
Making up a big part of the LIGHTSTREAM event, BAFTA-winning international artist, Tal Rosner, and over 40 students from an exciting new network of animation courses in the South West known as SWAN will be creating a series of fourteen stunning outdoor animated projections, combined with seductive soundscapes, lighting and installation art.
SWAN is an emerging network for animation professionals and students in the South West, which will launch at the festival on February 14th. It is an initiative started by John Parry, Programme Leader of the BA Animation course at Bristol School of Animation UWE, inviting all the animation and moving image courses in the South West region to collaborate on creative animation projects.
Animated Exeter’s 2014 project, LIGHTSTREAM, is inspired by one of the great pioneers of experimental animation, Norman McLaren, in his centenary year, and is led by Tal Rosner, a leading light in international moving image practice. Rosner has worked on multi-disciplinary collaborations from orchestral music and contemporary dance to creating the title sequences for Channel 4’s popular series ‘Skins’. Rosner has led mentoring workshops for students in addition to creating a spectacular animation himself that will dance across the facades of two buildings in the centre of Fore Street.
Animated Exeter has provided the first opportunity for a selection of colleges from SWAN to work on a project that will not only provide essential enrichment to individual course curriculums, but also opportunities for students to engage with the fundamental skills of networking and potentially develop future professional partnerships.
Director of Animated Exeter, Susannah Shaw, says of the event: “We’re delighted to be in at the birth of this new network. The South West has some of the very best courses in animation, traditional and digital, in the UK.
As well as the dazzling displays, you can try your hand at creating video and sound animations on the evenings of February 14th and 15th at Tuckers Hall where your own drawings will appear projected onto the wall linked to different musical sounds or wander outdoors and in the shops and arcades on Fore Street and prepare to be inspired and amazed by animations lighting up the night.
Event Information
Friday 14th February & Saturday 15th February
7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Free
Suitable for all ages.