The Projection Studio's Ross Ashton and sound artist Karen Monid recently collaborated on a son et lumière titled Rose. The 40-meter-high projection lit up York's Gothic cathedral and its large rose stained glass window, serving as a centerpiece for the 2010 Illuminating York festival of light. Working on the artwork with Paul Chatfield and Steve Larkens, also with The Projection Studio, and with lighting company White Light (which provided a Robert Juliat 2.5K followspot to back-light the window from within), Ashton and Monid spent close to a month developing the four-part show. It looped for three hours each evening for the four-night event, drawing close to 65,000 visitors to York's city center.
"It was a fantastic piece of art that really made the Minster come alive," said The Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamuse.
Ashton's projection system included four Pigi 7kW projectors with double rotating scrollers, each of which was loaded with about 14 meters of film. These were housed in a purpose-built tower in front of the cathedral's south façade.
The projectors had 15.5cm wide-angle lenses to maximize coverage from relatively short throw distances onto the long but shallow viewing area. The extreme angles made image alignment a real challenge, with significant keystone correction required.
Ashton, Monid and Michael Barry, who worked with Illuminating York's production manager Ben Pugh, installed the equipment. Monid programmed and ran the show using an OnlyCue system, and that process required four full nights of preparation on site.
Ashton and Monid had an open brief and no shortage of ideas for the four-part show once they decided to concentrate on the rose and its visual and symbolic relevance to the city's ancient and contemporary history.
The first part of the show focused on the rose as a symbol of Yorkshire, complete with Latin inscription taken from the Cathedral's chapter house and sounds bringing Yorkshire's wild nature to life.
The second section, "Rose Garden," combined love poetry spoken by local volunteers with images of climbing rose trees. This led into "Mary," which combined images of the Virgin Mary with an extract of the York Minster choir singing "Magnificat Septimi Toni" by Lassus.
The final part was a study of perfection, both mathematical and tonal, as glass sounds accompanied stained glass imagery and geometrical shapes and patterns.
The York Glazier's Trust's Nick Teed gave Ashton access to the cathedral's intricate stained glass, some of it up to 800 years old, and also opened up the Minster's archive and photographic library. From this massive resource, Ashton pursued a strategy of enlarging fine details.
Ashton and Monid were commissioned to produce this latest work following their collaboration for the 2008 Illuminating York event. Called Accendo, it lit the facades of the Yorkshire Museum and Abbey Ruins in York's Museum Gardens.
The Projection Studio had also recently worked with White Light on the Edinburgh Tattoo , a project that required four Pigi 6kW projectors with double-rotating scrollers.
