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Music, dance, bats and bikes! Centenary Open Day offers 'art for all'

Posted on 04/06/2009

Loughborough University Website

Music, dance, bats and bikes! Centenary Open Day offers ‘art for all’

Artists and musicians from around the world will gather at Loughborough University on Sunday 14 June as part of the Centenary Open Day celebrations.

Visitors will be able to hear swing, folk, classical and contemporary music, with performances from the Students’ Union’s Tuxdeo Swing Band, the University’s own music scholars and one of England’s leading young fiddlers, Tom Kitching, as well as many others.

Radar, Loughborough University’s contemporary art programme, will also showcase a series of stunning live events by international artists at venues across the University’s campus. Dancers will be creating temporary body sculptures, and visitors will have the chance to play their favourite song by pedalling a bike or experience the world from a bat’s point of view!

“Everyone will have the opportunity to see new work by artists who have responded to the University, through being artists in residence, working with the University’s academics or simply taking inspiration from the campus itself. It should be a really interesting and exciting day,” explains Nick Slater, Loughborough’s Director of Arts.

For those more at home with brushes and canvas, there will also be the opportunity to contribute to the giant ‘People’s Painting’ depicting iconic imagery of both the town and University, the first section of which was painted last month by pupils from the Thorpe Acre Primary School.

The arts events will run throughout the day from 12noon until 5pm at locations around the campus. Details of the Radar-commissioned programme are as follows:

Willi Dorner, Bodies in Urban Spaces 1pm and 3pm, Loughborough Students’ Union

Bodies in Urban Spaces is a moving trail, choreographed for a group of dancers. A chain of body sculptures, set up very quickly and existing only momentarily, allows the viewer to perceive the same space or place in a new and different way. The body sculptures give the architecture and surrounding locations a new meaning and a new perspective: a symbolic action - constructed on the run, set up quickly, but also gone quickly without leaving any trace.

Rules & Regs with Lucienne Cole and Ant Hampton 12noon to 5pm, Loughborough University Campus

Rules and Regs commission artists to produce new work according to a given set of rules or instructions. For their project at Radar, they will reverse their normal way of working, asking the artists themselves to create the rules. Artists Ant Hampton and Lucienne Cole will each devise a set of instructions to be carried out by 25 volunteers. The resulting action(s) must take place at Loughborough University and consider the nature of the institution.

Lisa Cheung, Velo-Rel-a 1pm to 3pm, outside the Edward Herbert Building

Velo-Rel-La is a mobile music station powered by a bicycle. Its creator, artist Lisa Cheung, invites a broad spectrum of people to participate, requiring energetic volunteers to pedal the music station, producing enough cycle-generated electricity to power the integrated CD players, turn-table and speakers, reminiscent of the simple ‘wind-up’ power of gramaphones and music boxes. Visitors are invited to bring music in any format from ipod to vinyl, to be played as part of this unique, participatory artwork. Velo-Rel-La has been commissioned by Radar, and developed with assistance from Sammy Delgrado Escabor, The School of Art and Department of Electronic Engineering at Loughborough University and Javier Pavon Beltran.

Antony Hall, BAT NAV ‘biosonar’ 1pm to 4pm, James France Building

BAT NAV ‘biosonar’ is a wearable device that allows users to experience the world from a bat’s viewpoint. The newly created device uses ultra-sonic sound waves to enable people to navigate around confined spaces and total darkness. BAT NAV ‘biosonar’ has been developed by artist Anthony Hall, during a residency with the Electronic and Electrical Engineering Department and is commissioned by Radar. This work in progress will be available for visitors to find out more and have a go.

International Village Shop 12noon to 5pm, outside the Cope Auditorium

Art group Public Works/myvillages.org have worked with a youth group from Barrow and researchers from the Sports Technology Institute to design and produce a new multi sports product. The shop will sell this new product along with other products that the artists have made with villages and product designers from across Europe.