Second year BA (Hons) Lighting Design Student, Espen Karlsen has returned to Rose Bruford College following a successful industry placement at Hull City of Culture working on the Where Do We Go From Here? art installation by the internationally renowned Jason Bruges Studio.

Where Do We Go from Here? used a specially choreographed interplay of light, shadow and sound to guide people through Hull’s Old Town. It encouraged people to explore the city’s night-time streets as dormant robots awaken, responding to the city’s architecture, interacting with one another and with Hull’s residents and visitors.

As part of his role Espen worked under the guidance of BA (Hons) Creative Lighting Control graduate, Carlos Valente, across four sites, ensuring everything ran smoothly technically.

Espen explained:

“Carlos and I worked across all the sites to make sure they were all working correctly and satisfied the requirements of the event clients. Two of the sites were interactive, one was a show and the last was a still image so they all created different challenges.”

The site-specific installations focused on three areas around Hull’s Old Town, each featuring a different configuration of re-purposed industrial robots of varying sizes from ground to rooftop. The robots communicated through woven networks and acted as light guides creating kinetic animations resulting in an inquisitive acquaintance with the city.

The robots were controlled by the Cuecore2 system, which Espen gained a greater understanding of:

“I learnt a lot about Cuecore2, which you can record dmx and all other data on. It was the main brain on all sites and asked the robots if they were ready and when they answered they would move to next sequence.”

BA (Hons) Lighting Design Programme Director, Hansjorg Schmidt, was delighted that the placement was such a success:

“Espen’s placement is an example of our commitment to providing students with the skills, experience and industry networks required to progress into employment upon graduating. I would like to thank the team at Jason Bruges Studio for providing him with the unique opportunity to work with them.”

Reflecting on his experience in Hull, Espen commented;

“The placement taught me to understand more about the process of planning and implementing a 5-week installation which required to be programmed to run automatically every day. It was a great experience to experience that side of the industry as I had never worked on anything like that before.”

Useful links
BA (Hons) Lighting Design
Jason Bruges Studio