CAMBRIDGE, U.K. – The 2014 e-Luminate Festival here netted a second Guinness World Record nod for projection and video artist Ross Ashton. This time it was for the “Largest Card Illusion Reveal.” Ashton collaborated with Italian illusionist Alexis Arts on the project, creating the visuals with a single 17K Panasonic projector rigged onto a specially constructed tower at the end of the lawn in front of the building.
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The five minute choreographed performance in front of a live audience featured projected video effects and animations throughout, beamed onto the side of the chapel at Sidney Sussex College. It culminated in two audience members picking cards which were then revealed on the wall as giant projections measuring 128.25 square metres!
This was declared as ‘Officially Amazing’ by the adjudicators from Guinness World Records.
It’s the second world Record Ashton has collected for his work. He comments, “It’s fantastic to achieve two world records within two years! Working with Alexis on this show was a real pleasure and another completely different performance genre in which to be involved”.
Ashton’s first World Record was gained in 2012 for the ‘Face Britain’ video projection work onto the front of Buckingham Palace in London, officially confirmed as a Guinness World Record for the ‘most artists working on the same art installation’.
Ashton is one of a handful of artists who has been permitted to use Buckingham Palace for his work, and the Face Britain images were formatted to use it as a wide-screen canvass for 32 animated mosaic portraits of HM The Queen, made up from 201,948 self-portraits submitted by children from around the UK. All these portraits were carefully scrutinized by Guinness World Records and certified as individual artworks.
The Largest Card Illusion Reveal was created using a single 17K Panasonic projector, rigged onto a specially constructed tower at the end of the lawn in front of the building.
Ashton chose this specific projector for its “Brightness, compact size and reliability”. He adds the support from Panasonic throughout the 12 day e-Luminate Cambridge Festival – of which Ashton is the Artistic Director – has also been excellent.
The annual e-Luminate Cambridge Festival has been set up to connect ambitious art with ingenious technology to shed light on low carbon innovation.
