Brunel's Dream

The installation was made following a period of collaborative work with the playwright John Downie. The mechanics of light production explored aspects of the innovative life of the 19th Century English civil engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The production of Brunel's Dream was directed by Downie with a company of final year students from the Drama Department of the University of Bristol. In the main installation, a roll of 16mm film threaded progressively through a line of six synchronised projectors rigged behind a screen suspended above the performance area. Commencing to the left of the stage, the images of countryside passing, as if from a train window, increased in apparent speed; after 8-mins the images on the film faded from view to the right of the stage. Other projections included a matrix of slide back-projected images on the lower screen of the steel plating sides of the Great Britain steamship, then undergoing restoration in a Bristol drydock, following retrieval from the Falkland Isles; a slide projection of the image of a white circle on black, enabled the re-creation of Anthony McCalls 'Line Describing a Cone' using smoke to make the beam visible and into which the action continued.