Read more"/>

Living Sculpture (Virtual)

Living Sculpture (Virtual) is a digital interactive artwork inspired by the research around symbiosis led by Michael Brockhurst at the University of York.  A wooden structure emitting low frequency sounds invites visitors to place their hands within, and pass through a layer of holographic particles.

As people feel the ungraspable dots, they start to react to their hand movements. As a second person enters the sculpture, the dots connect the players and take the form of a floating piece of drapery, constantly changing as if alive. The ephemeral sculture created by the players feels like a soft connecting skin, or a very fragile living creature, exploding back to chaos if one player removes their hands from the structure.

“Touching these ghostly dots felt like trying to catch snowflakes. The moment they land in your hand and you think you can catch it, it melts away and you can never grasp it.”

This work is part of Laurence Payot’s on-going investigation into the symbiosis-like relationships between the sculptural forms she creates and audiences, exploring how material can create social connections (in a body of work previously funded by C2D2, Arts Council England, the Bluecoat and Tate Liverpool – Symbiosis: social experiments with Living Sculptures).

“We felt connected by some sort of electric field, as if it was the magnetic forces between us being made visible. “