SKYFRAME: WHERE PATHS MEET

SKYFRAME: WHERE PATHS MEET

From 1st to 18th October, a brand-new Skyframe activation invites the whole city to stop by and play.

Skyframe London is a busy pedestrian passageway in the City of London, where most commuters and tourists pass through on their way somewhere else. Above them hangs a 180m² suspended LED ceiling, which The Story Engineers installed in 2018 and now maintain and curate in partnership with Generali Real Estate and BNP Paribas Real Estate.

For the past three years, most of the screen’s seasonal media has been made to be watched. The exception was Skyframe Piano, where playing a physical public piano created skyscapes overhead. Where Paths Meet brings that interaction back, this time using sensors, so that anyone walking through can take part, no piano lessons required.

Created by Alex Wilcox, Applied Innovation Producer at The Story Engineers, Where Paths Meet turns people’s movement into artwork on the screen above.

DRAWING WITH YOUR FOOTSTEPS

The canvas is a grid of half-metre squares, and every minute its colour and texture shift. Step beneath it and a tile lifts away directly above you, revealing a second layer underneath. As you walk, you leave a line of open tiles behind you that slowly fades. Stop, and the opening widens instead, spreading further across the screen the longer you stay. Stay still for longer and a third layer appears: an abstract, evolving shape that only people patient enough to wait will see.

The sound follows what’s happening overhead. Through the space’s ambient sound system, it starts as a low, meditative drone and the occasional singing bowl. As people linger and uncover more of the hidden layer, nature sounds start to take over: running water, crackling fire and birdsong, each tied to one of the colour layers being revealed above.

The piece rewards people who pause and look up, and it’s at its most striking when a group steps out of the lifts from The Garden at 120. While they gather, a pool of colour opens up above them. As they scatter, it breaks into vine-like trails that ripple out across the grid behind each person.

IT KNOWS YOU’RE THERE, WITHOUT EVER SEEING YOU

None of this relies on cameras. Lidar sensors above Fen Court read how beams of light bounce back to work out where people are and how they’re moving, without ever capturing or storing an image of anyone. That data goes straight to the screen, so the canvas responds to footfall as it happens instead of playing a fixed loop. 

The best way to understand it is to see it! It’s free, and all you have to do is turn up, slow down and look up.

Skyframe London is a transitory space. One shared by commuters and tourists, all travelling through. Where Paths Meet reflects the movement of passers-by on the screen above. People who dwell make a lingering mark. Those who pass through leave a fading trail. Together, all these marks of passage dig into the digital above, combining in colour and pattern to create an ever-evolving, shared canvas in the sky. 

– Alex Wilcox, Applied Innovation Producer at The Story Engineers.

Check the reel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5X6sNa9Qm4