Methods
Pablo Valbuena, Durham Cathedral · creation and control tools · 2017 · Lumiere Durham, United Kingdom
Our role Creation and control tools, light and LEDs, sound.
Light runs through Durham Cathedral, inside and out, following its bells. The work draws on change ringing, the seventeenth-century English art of ringing bells in mathematical sequences: the cathedral is divided into ten segments, one per bell, and the light makes these patterns visible.
Every evening, teams of bell ringers from across the United Kingdom played it live. We designed and developed the tools that link the sound of the bells to the light of a thousand-year-old monument, in real time, at the scale of a cathedral: the largest and most complex work of the festival that year.
Created with the cathedral’s ringing master, Christopher Crabtree, and the Durham bell team, who wrote the score. Lumiere Durham, 16 to 19 November 2017.
Credits
- Artist Pablo Valbuena
- Music Christopher Crabtree and the Durham Cathedral bell team
- Creation and control tools Hand Coded
- Production Artichoke, Lumiere Durham; producer Hannah Standen
Press
- “By far the largest and most complex piece this year is Methods, the bells and lights at the cathedral.” Maev Kennedy, The Guardian, 2017
- Church Times, 2017 · Yorkshire Post, 2017
Photos
Videos
Team
- Pablo Valbuena · Artist, light, space and perception
- Cyril Laurier · Co-founder. PhD in music AI, Sony CSL researcher.
- Maya Benaïnous · Co-founder. Artist and engineer, creator of Ledotron.
