Taking Place

An Interactive Video Installation at Heathrow, Terminal 5, collaborating with Emma Johnston. A terminal exists as a site of transition both physically and emotionally. It is a temporal space for those who pass through it, an in-between space of social connectivity. It is a place of departure and arrival where personal exchanges of emotion are enacted publicly and collectively. As artists we wanted to create a piece which not only explored these above concepts but offered the passenger a mirror to their own experiences of travel. We wanted to create a piece which enabled a sense of global connectivity encouraging excitement about their journey and physical experience of travelling to their destinations. The artwork consists of a structural shape, one which echoes the take off runways, and is uplifting in its appearance, drawing the viewers vision up and out to the airside of the terminal. Displayed on this structure are a series of projections consisting of imagery from arrival terminals around the world. The imagery focuses on an aerial view of passengers arriving through the gates at their destination; the end of the journey, completing a cycle of transition from one space to another. The projections are aligned so that the movement of passengers around the world becomes synchronised with the direction of the structure of our piece, as if they are all walking up and along the artwork.