High Arctic

Walked down to Greenwich to visit the High Arctic installation at the National Maritime Museum's new Sammy Ofer Wing. This is the first exhibition in the new 820m² gallery space in the basement of the new wing. Spent nearly an hour and a half there immersing myself in each of the five "light pools", listening to the poetry and text readings. I was virtually on my own for much of the time, which helped.



"Icebergs"

The installation consists of over 3,000 columns of varying hight. Each representing a glacier - the name printed on the top in UV paint so that it is only visible when you shine your UV torch on it (these are given to you on the way in). Arranged among the columns are five "light pools". These have high precision dynamic projections on the floor, with which you can interact with the UV torch. The constantly shifting projections respond to where and how you shine the torch. In one, a contour map of Svalbard scrolls and zooms in and out as you interact with the compass rose. In another, white squares - icebergs - calve-off from the glacier columns when you point at them, and then flow away and shatter when you swirl the torch around them. At each light pool there are different "soundscape" effects and readings from poems especially written by Nick Drake and excerpts from texts by Arctic explorers and others.

I quite liked this installation. The interactive visuals were very impressive and totally engaging, and the whole was thoughtful, immersive and haunting. I particularly liked the final one with icebergs which ended with a poem - a kind of futuristic shipping forecast - read over the Radio 4 closing tune "Sailing By" (this is used as the soundtrack in the video below). I did that one twice.

High Arctic from United Visual Artists on Vimeo.

I might go and see this again before it closes in January.