Megan Broadmeadow - Lighting and movement inspiration

Yesterday evening I attended the talk at NTU presented by Megan Broadmeadow, an artist who designs and makes immersive exhibitions, sculptures and works on large framing projects including festival stage frame works and decoration.

Megan uses spacial awareness, combined with film, music, lighting and sometimes sculptural pieces to create a sensory and immersive space. Being inspired by rave culture and electronic music, Megan's art includes a lot of moving and illusional images, innovative costume design, bold and neon colours, fast paced or disorientated music, and a variety of scale exploration, all which contribute to creating an over all mesmerising experience for the viewer.

I found the presentation and visuals really inspiring and exciting to view. The use of different lighting is something that I tried to focus my attention on. One image was of a green lit room which made me feel a little uncomfortable and almost uneasy, this is going to something I research into to discover the psychology behind that. Its something I might consider for part 1 of my sensory experience, having the cact-eye chair lit up by green uv lights.

The first image is of a frame work that can rotate, as soon as I saw that it made me think of the carnival lantern, part 3. I have been thinking of how to construct the lantern, because I'd like it to be quite large, at least a meter in width, and an octagon in shape, finding a frame is proving very hard. Realistically I think I will make the frame myself, using metal bars and rope to construct it. This being the case, it would be possible to make it spin, rather than constantly rotating. One idea was that when someone has bent down and walked through the tassels, and are stood up inside the lantern, they could spin it themselves. The lantern is going to be designed with a different inside to the outside, the inside being made up of jacquard knitted textiles of graphic images translated from my personal photographs of urban street culture and the faces found in them. This was to create a celebration of life, just like the festival itself, my own translation of the street festival, it is meant to be overwhelming and a crazy combination of bright colour and exciting textures. If it could be spun it would only emphasise this, the person inside being completely immersed in the carnival.