Festival of Projections

WHERE Beaney House of Art and Knowledge
WHEN Saturday 09:00-17:00, Sunday 10:00-17:00

The magic lantern is a projection device invented in the 17th century. The machines used the light of candles and oil lamps to produce shows that took people’s breath away as they saw projected moving images for the very first time. These intricate machines were often used by magicians and conjurers, to create spellbinding tales of ghosts and spirits in the darkness of the projection room. In contrast to our digital age in which technology is largely hidden and incomprehensible, the magic lantern’s relatively simple mechanism – a direct ancestor of the motion picture projector – enable us to understand how moving image works – and create a sense of wonder.

For this exhibition nine specially selected artists are using material from the Beaney’s unique collections, together with rare original magic lantern machines and beautiful Victorian slides, as a starting point to create brand new works.

Stories in the Dark is curated by artist Ben Judd, and is a co-commission by the Beaney House of Art & Knowledge and Whitstable Biennale, festival of contemporary art.

With special thanks to Joss Marsh and David Francis (Kent Museum of the Moving Image), Nick Hiley (University of Kent) and The Magic Lantern Society. The exhibition continues until 19 June. 

WHERE: Jarman Foyer
WHEN: Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th, 14:00-20:00

Digital B-Orders is an interactive installation using motion sensitive lighting. Inspired by traditional Islamic Qur’an and manuscript illumination, the surface of the artwork is intricately decorated. On closer inspection, there is more going on under the surface, with software, circuits and electrical components enabling interactivity, based on the viewer’s movement. The almost visible underlying structure alludes to the hidden order beyond the surface, in this case bringing newly interpreted life to a traditionally static art form. Digital B-Orders was developed as part of practice-based PhD research by Sara Choudhrey (School of Arts) who is looking into the use of digital technologies by Islamic artists in the UK.

ARTISTS Tracey Affleck, Val Bolsover, Sophie Brown, Jose Fernandez Levy, Fiona Townend and Claudia Chiappini
WHEN Friday Saturday and Sunday 11:00-17:00
WHERE ROOM, outside the Pilkington Building on the University of Kent Medway campus at Pembroke

Entering this blue-as-the-sky space, in order to understand it collaboratively, are a group of six Fine Art MA artists from the School of Music and Fine Art, working with a proposition by artist and senior lecturer Adam Chodzko:

…When the flood receded one of the ship’s 20 containers was left beached in a Medway library’s car park.  Although apparently empty, inspection detected the emission of a low resonant ‘cello-like’ pulse somewhere within the box’s interior and the strange rearrangement of the visitors’ smartphone data. Shipping records indicate the container’s transit of a ‘cloudbuster’, based on Wilhelm Reich’s designs, without detailing where it was going, or who had sent it.  

ROOM is a converted shipping container, designed by architect Simon Barker. This is a multiple-partnered project involving Island Projects, The University of Kent and the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust.