14 ATTRACTIONS & EXPERIENCES
DON’T YOU WONDER SOMETIMES ’BOUT SOUND AND VISION?
London’s Lightroom offers a spatial oddity layered across a labyrinth of visual content with its latest spectacle Words Verity Butler
I will never forget how I found out David Bowie had passed away. I woke up and switched on my bedside radio, which happened to be midway through playing Starman . As I listened (still half-asleep!), I felt that pleasant, inspired feeling I always get when I hear that song. As it reached its conclusion, I distinctly remember thinking for likely the hundredth time: “What a great song.” But then the solemn voice of the presenter drifted over the top of the tune’s final bars: “Rest in peace, David Bowie.” That was the last time I listened to a Bowie song counting my lucky stars to be sharing the same planet as him. Bowie’s celestial life and career had a profound impact on the world – a world that hasn’t been quite so iridescent since he left it. But how do you sum up and celebrate such an impactful life? It seems like a crime that, in the age of endless cinematic biopics, nothing has cut through that honours this legend of many eras and personalities. It seems we may be waiting a little while longer (think four individual, feature-length Beatles films as units of measurement) for Hollywood to jump onto the Bowie bandwagon. But, unsurprisingly, the live entertainment sector is already on it. Lightroom, in
towering more than 11 metres high with projection on all four walls and the floor.” CH-CH-CH-CH-CHAPTERS When entering the venue, we asked the steward: “What time does the next show start?” That’s when we quickly discovered the clever format of the experience. It works in an endlessly looping presentation, meaning visitors can come in, pick up the show from any given moment and watch until they realise they’re back at the start again. This gives them the opportunity to take it in all over again, if they so wish. “The film in the Bowie archives is from a variety of eras and media, with quality ranging from beautiful 35mm film footage to grainy eighties videotape,” says co-director and design director Tom Wexler. “Finding a way to present this on the canvas of Lightroom was a big challenge and required an inventive approach both to editing and composition.” “The 27,000-pixel-wide canvas at Lightroom also meant that we had to be very efficient with render times and storage space to allow us to remain responsive as the project developed.” The film itself is structured in thematic chapters, offering unique insights into Bowie’s perspective on the subjects
London, kicked off the David Bowie: You’re Not Alone experience in April, and it is set to run until this October. Located just ten minutes’ walk from King’s Cross St Pancras railway station, the Lightroom is an immersive venue that blends sound, motion and light to create a new kind of storytelling. “A Lightroom show is always a deeply collaborative process when dealing with a world-leading creative,” begins David Sabel, executive producer at Lightroom. “Whether that was David Hockney creating brand-new work for the projection format, Tom Hanks using the space to tell the story of the Apollo programme or, in this case, working with the David Bowie estate, in every event, you’re creating a piece of work that is totally authentic.” The sole voice heard during David Bowie: You’re Not Alone is that of the artist himself, and the experience is both a multimedia spectacle and an intimate, revealing self-portrait. The 360° experience, which is produced by Lightroom and designed by 59, A Journey Studio, is written and directed by 59’s Mark Grimmer and Tom Wexler. “The other thing that sets us apart is the deployment of technology within our space – and the space itself,” adds Sabel. “The scale of the room is huge,
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