Meltdown Festival 2008
June, 2008
Meltdown curators Massive Attack invited UVA to have a unique visual role in the festival. This resulted in the exhibition of their award-winning installation ‘Volume’ on Riverside Terrace, a new large scale projection as a collaboration with the human rights charity ‘Reprieve’ and the architectural lighting of the façade of the building. Inside the Royal Festival Hall UVA created a visual score for the 2 Massive Attack shows and for the Heritage Orchestra’s performance of Vangelis’s Blade Runner.
Natural History Museum - Darwin’s Canopy Exhibition
June, 2008
Video of proposed fabrication process, including computer simulation of plant growth.
Video of plant growth simulation, software written in house. .
United Visual Artists (along with nine artists including Mark Wallinger, Rachel Whiteread and Mark Fairington) were shortlisted to create an artwork for the ceiling of the Natural History Museum, as part of the celebrations for the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. UVA’s proposal demonstrates Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection in action. A computer simulation of evolution covers the ceiling with an intricate forest of abstract “plants”, which are manufactured using rapid-prototyping technology, then fixed to the ceiling. In the center of the ceiling, a single light mimics the sun, towards which the complex ecosystem grows.