Barco LED screen forms unique underfloor art installation

Dec. 6, 2005
Barco has supplied LED display modules for an art installation in a London theatre.
Barco has supplied LED display technology for an art installation in the floor of a children's theatre in London.
Unicorn Theatre foyer The LED artwork by David Cotterrell is located in the floor of the entrance lobby of the new £13m Unicorn Theatre, situated behind City Hall on the south bank.

Cotterrell’s work for the theatre, Underworld, takes the form of an LED screen that is embedded into the floor of the Unicorn’s foyer. The imagery of Underworld is algorithmically generated, rather than animated and shows a continuously evolving urban environment.

Rendered cinematically in real-time according to mathematical instruction and parameters, the cityscapes will evolve in a way that is governed by principles extracted from competing twentieth century theories of urban design and town planning.

Underworld Placed just over one meter below the floor are 24 tiles of Barco ILITE 6 MD, with a total area of 3.58m x 1.34m, and a resolution of 6 mm.

Jonathan Cooper, Managing Director of Barco UK stated “The Unicorn Theatre is unique in that it is the first purpose-built children’s theatre in Central London and as such we are proud to be part of such an iconic venture and especially proud to be encouraging children of all ages to appreciate modern art in the form of LED. This particular installation is very creative and to our knowledge the first time that LED has been used as a piece of permanent artwork.”