Talking Posts

The Old Market, Upper Market Street, Hove, Thursday, September 17, to Tuesday, September 22

CUTTING edge projection technology meets a primal desire to tell stories around a flickering flame in the world premiere of Shared Space And Light’s new installation.

The Brighton-based duo of Chris Grottick and Giles Thatcher have previously used their projection skills to reimagine Brighton landmark the Pepperpot in Tower Of Dreams, and worked on the site-specific performances Home Fires at Newhaven Fort and Our Dancing Days taking Boots in Queen’s Road back to its previous life as a dance hall.

Talking Posts is a new departure from site specific work, which they hope they will be able to take around the country.

A pair of specially made lamp-posts –designed around vintage Victorian gas lamps - contains projected holographic heads which interact with each other telling ghost stories and spooky tales taken from Brighton and Hove’s rich history.

“Brighton is a notorious hot spot for ghosts,” says Grottick.

“We hope the audience will walk past, look up and feel a bit uncomfortable, especially when they hear a story referring to things which happened only a couple of streets away.”

The initial plan was to encourage local people to video themselves telling their ghost stories, but instead Grottick and Thatcher have done their own research into Brighton’s spooky history and employed scriptwriter Sara Clifford to stitch them together.

“The Argus has come up time and time again,” says Grottick. “Often the newspaper was reporting the stories first.

“I even read a story yesterday about how people used to be freaked out by the old offices [in Kensington Street] – three photographers kept going into the dark room and seeing the same figure again and again.”

The stories range from the 17th to the 20th century, and feature little details about Brighton’s past – from the experiences of servants in the city, to the sea water which flooded up to the clock tower during extremely high tides.

“What inspired us was the stories you tell around the campfire,” says Grottick.

“We went camping with lots of children recently and got a fire going – and everyone wanted to tell stories. Even with Minecraft and the internet there is still a deep need for these stories and for people to be freaked out on some level.”

Allied to this primal need to tell a story is the cutting edge technology side of the production.

“In the last year or so you have been able to get really small projectors,” says Grottick.

“The ones we are using in the glass enclosures are the size of a packet of cigarettes. A few years ago we couldn’t do this. The cost of projectors has gone down, meaning we can do bigger shows for less money. Technology is moving so fast.”

Grottick’s own history is in fine art, making video art in London galleries.

“Over time you get disappointed with the amount of people who come to see your shows,” he says. “I got excited by the fact you could show your work out of doors to a bigger audience.”

Thatcher was doing just that, providing visuals for the likes of electronic musicians Orbital including designing projected imagery for the main stage at Glastonbury.

Having first met 20 years ago in the same warehouse studio in Shoreditch, the pair hooked up again when Grottick moved down to Brighton, and launched Shared Space And Light five years ago.

“Community involvement is really important to us,” says Grottick. “We like to get the interaction and participation from people as a starting point for the actual projections.”

For more information about the duo’s work visit www.sharedspaceandlight.com/

Starts 7.30pm, free. Call 01273 201801.