Face Britain - Night 2 - 1

Face Britain - Night 2 - 1, originally uploaded by Ross Ashton.

Hello, Its been a very busy year to date. I have a lot of projects coming up this year that will keep us hard at it until well into the 4th quarter.  So here is my first blog of the year.  (I know, I know, its April already.)

Anyway,  Its a pretty exciting one for all concerned so I hope it was worth the wait.

I was asked to be the artist to create the collaborative artwork that was the culmination of the Face Britain project.

These projections onto Buckingham Palace were created to break the World Record for the Most Artists Working on the Same Art Installation.

Every child in the UK was invited to upload a self-portrait to be used as part of the installation. In the end over 200,000 responded and there individual portraits were reformed into 32 animated mosaic portraits of Queen Elizabeth II.  This should have smashed the precious record of around 25,000 artists.  When we have confirmation I will let you know.

Provided by my friends at Creative Technology, Scott Burgess supplied 24 high power video projectors.  These were stitched together to create the images, which were across the entire façade of Buckingham Palace.  Scott also took on board the logistics for the towers, power and crew so hats off to him and the guys, especially Dave Boeck.

The Images were gathered together by Photobox and Overthrow and they supplied all the portraits to a fixed size to be made into the mosaics of the Queen.  Boris Glazer from Mazaika created a bespoke version of his software for me to create the "flying" cells which construct each iteration of the portrait. Спасибо Boris.

All in all I feel like the tip of a very large iceberg and I am deeply grateful for the support and professionalism of all these people.

Also I should mention the charity itself, The Princes Foundation for Children and the Arts, who have worked tirelessly to make 200,000 children into World Record Holders and to put them into the  history books.  A fantastic thing to do!

Patzi, Emma, Jeremy, Rebecca and all your colleagues, well done!

Face Britain ran from the 19th to the 21st April 2012 and was part of the Diamond Jubilee Celebrations.

The Princes Foundation for Children and the Arts
www.childrenandarts.org.uk

Artist – Ross Ashton
www.theprojectionstudio.com

Website – Overthrow
www.overthrowdigital.com

Image Handling – Photobox
www.photobox.co.uk

Mosaic Software – Boris A Glazer
www.mazaika.com

Equipment & Installation – Creative Technology
www.ctlondon.com

Illuminata 2011 - rehearsal shot.

Illuminata 2011 - rehearsal, originally uploaded by Ross Ashton.

For the next three days we will be showing "Illuminata", the history of Caerphilly Castle. This is a free show that will run at 17:30 and 18:30 Friday to Sunday, 9th to the 11th December. Caerphilly also has a medieval fayre on over the weekend, so I think we may be busy.

The show is free so come along! Visit the castle at night and see it in a new way. All the details are here.


The guys have worked really hard, especially today with gale force winds and freezing monsoon rain.
Tomorrow will be dry but cold, so don't forget to wrap up warm.

Pavilion of Dreams from Ross Ashton on Vimeo.

This was created for Enchanted Parks in Gateshead. Yet another freezing gig with over a foot of snow! Anyway, the idea was to reinterpret the bowling pavilion at Saltwell Park with a series of themes taken from Fairy Tales. I think it worked well. We had great problems as the layers of snow threw out the mapping. Still, for a small artwork I am quite satisfied with the result. I hope you like it.