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Tracing the Sky

An immersive art installation in an underground hidden location

A hidden underground space in a busy city is transformed into an immersive sanctuary. Under a Victorian shopping arcade, a space void of physical content is filled with floating motion graphics emerging from the brick walls of the deep basement hideaway.

Exhibition: 14 – 20 July 2019
Press preview: 14 July
Open to public: 15-17 July & 19-20 July
Closed 18 July

Artist: Jiayu Liu

Presented by FutureEverything, sponsored by OPPO

The installation premiers in Manchester, UK as part of Distractions

Arresting imagery glides across the brickwork, vaulted ceilings and chambers of the subterranean location, filling the architecture with dreamlike skyscapes. The work uses 3D scanning, projection mapping and mobile phones equipped with augmented reality software to allow the audience to interact with the projections. Visitors will find themselves immersed in a fluid environment of simulated clouds and skies that change in response to how they interact with the installation via smartphone technology. Sounds generated from these interactions will add another dimension to the experience.

Tracing the Sky brings together in the same space two contrasting elements: the sky (air) and architecture (earth). This encounter allows each element to accentuate the presence of the other, overlapping virtuality and reality, tangible and intangible, human-made and natural. Jiayu Liu combines art and technology, creating a poetic way for visitors to observe and interact with their surrounding environment. Liu invites them to consider the empty space not just in terms of what it has to show, but as a place to reflect on our relationship with the natural, in this case the atmosphere and encompassing skies. 

(Lead image credit: Matthew Watt)

Tracing the Sky is an artwork by Jiayu Liu, presented by FutureEverything, sponsored by OPPO

The installation premiers in Manchester, UK as part of Distractions, a three-day tech summit presented by Manchester International Festival, Sound City and FutureEverything, developed by the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham and Greater Manchester Combined Authority, with the support of Peter Saville, Rose Marley and Modern Designers.

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