Year
2015
Tag
Installations
Above a festival crowd, light describes a circle. Its appearance changes as the evening moves on. The people beneath it are listening to the same programme, but the experience of being there is never quite the same from one person or position to another.
Hertz 1.7 made an exploratory record of that changing atmosphere. Six electronically controlled, LED-equipped windmills translated information gathered among festivalgoers into a real-time light code. The installation brought a reading of the audience back into the place where it was being made.
2015 · MBC Fest · Art & Research / Installations.
The original MBC Fest case-study film, recovered from the Drive archive and optimised for web playback.
Listening inside the crowd
A field team moved among attendees to collect information. The surviving report distinguishes several dimensions of the festival experience, including mood and responses to the music, and compares observations across times and positions within the crowd.
The report describes the piece and its methodology as exploratory and prototypical. That qualification matters. A changing festival cannot be reduced to a single stable state; a reading depends on who is encountered, when they are asked and where they are standing.
Rotating light becomes a visible circular field.
Field collection beside one of the display units.
Information in rotation
The display used movement as well as illumination. LEDs mounted on rotating devices produced visible circular traces, turning the electronic control of light into something that could be perceived across the festival space.
The same site therefore held the experience, its collection and its representation. People could encounter a visual account of a crowd to which they belonged. The display added another rhythm to the evening, alongside the stage and the movements of the audience.
The freestanding light display after dark.
The festival audience and stage at MBC Fest.
A partial account of being together
A festival’s atmosphere is often recalled afterwards as a single feeling. Hertz 1.7 stayed with its differences while the event was still unfolding. Its account was situated and temporary, made from encounters within a particular crowd.
The changing light gave a public form to reports gathered within the crowd. It directed attention towards shifts in experience that could otherwise pass unnoticed. The record and the experience occupied the same night, without becoming the same thing.
How it was made
Six motor-driven display units combined rotating arms, LEDs, electronic control and freestanding supports. A field team collected information among attendees; the control system translated that input into changing light patterns. Original assembly renders show the housing, internal parts and support.
Original exploded render showing the housing and internal assembly.
Original assembly render of a Hertz 1.7 display unit.
References
- Original DDS case study — Original project description and photographic record.
A project by Domestic Data Streamers. Images selected from the original project and exhibition archives.
