Ross Ashton creates giant video artwork for 2013 Cheriton Lights Festival

Ashton was commissioned to produce the piece by production company Strange Cargo and collaborated with sound artist Karen Monid who produced a special accompanying soundscape.

All Souls, which stands at the end of the High Street and was consecrated in 1895, is a conventional parish church of its era, however it has the unusual feature of four stunning stained glass windows depicting the four Archangels – Gabriel, Michael, Uriel and Raphael.

Ashton and Monid took these windows and the colours of the peacock feathers making up their wings as the starting point of their concept.

The idea was to produce a two centre piece which worked both inside and outside the church with Monid’s soundscape tying the two zones together.

The sounds of birdsong and angelic voices ran inside the church, where the interior was lit entirely with candlelight, except for the angel windows, which were illuminated from the outside by spotlights, creating a very special ambience that was ideal for reflection, contemplation and calm.

Outside the soundtrack played alongside Ashtons’ frieze of animated Archangels.  Laid out against a kaleidoscopic feather based background, they were projected across the entire front of the Church, covering an area 16 x 10 metres.

The projector was a Panasonic PT-DZ21K, supplied by Creative Technology. Fitted with a 1.3 lens it was located 25 metres away pointing out of an office window across the road from the church – the optimum projection position.

The looped video content was run from a Macintosh laptop  and all the warping and perspective correction was achieved using Panasonic’s proprietary software tools.

Sound was run from a 24-track ADAT machine supplied by Projection Studio, processed through a Soundcraft mixing desk. Outside it was relayed via a pair of d&b E9 speakers and inside, they hooked into the Church’s in-house speaker system. The Church also supplied all the candles.

The motion graphics were created by The Projection Studio’s Sang Gun Kim based on concepts and photographic work undertaken by Ashton.