Conrad Shawcross' Space Trumpet

I am obsessed with Conrad Shawcross' Space Trumpet.

A 9x9x9 meter installation in the atrium of Unilever's Blackfriars office, Space Trumpet is four giant gramophone horns suspended from the ceiling, and appears to be a larger version of an existing work.

It's mesmerising partly because it's awesome in the purest sense of the word (it's 9 meters square, after all), partly because it moves. When you're not looking. At least that's how it feels. As Mr Shawcross explains:

"The space is very white and clinical, and I like the way the wood of 'Space Trumpet' contrasts with that. It's built for that space – a series of tulip shapes that rotate a certain amount throughout the day – and it's on a constant cycle. You get a constantly changing view that takes two months to repeat; by that time hopefully you will have forgotten how it looked at the start. I wanted to do something that was for the people working in the building. I wanted it to be almost like looking out of a window, like the effect the weather has."

Unfortunately, "throughout the day" seems to mean at some point in each 24 hours and that point is mostly outside regular office hours. Which means it's hard to catch it moving. It's like a cartoon where a character moves only when the other isn't looking.

But thankfully its perambulations are not exclusively out of hours. For at least one day in that two month cycle, Space Trumpet moves at lunchtime. And last month I managed to catch it in the act with my dirty-lensed iPhone:

More Space Trumpet from patricksyms on Vimeo.

Perhaps if there was a twitter feed like @towerbridge, I might get to see it move more often.

Now there's an idea...

Comments

[petite_a]

Beautiful example. I am sure you will enjoy Stephen Fry Kinetic Typography - Language http://bit.ly/cTrBIm

[Patrick]

Hey, Alex. Thanks for stopping by. Kinetic Typography as a format? Not bad.