The Doctor of Light
Chris Allen is the founder and director of East London multimedia production company The Light Surgeons, a company whose work ranges from live cinema performances, exterior projections, installations, and exhibitions, which utilise both old and new technologies. He was one of the panelists for our Art and Technology discussion where he talked about his new piece for the Museum of London LDN24. We caught up with him to talk about The Creators Project.
The Creators Project: What have you thought about the project so far?
Chris Allen:The international aspect of the project is fascinating, and it’s going to be very interesting to see how it unfolds as it travels around the world and how culturally the work is understood and accepted.
Do you think the project is representative of what you were saying in the conference about multimedia expanding across the world?
Well one of the points I was making in the conference was that there is no one person that knows how to make a mobile phone, so I think by default we are all collaborators now. There are a lot of artists who are individual artists, but even if they are using technology, they are reliant on other knowledge. So we stand on the shoulders of giants, so they say. Musicians collaborate to create music in a very organic and direct way, but film has always been a very hierarchical structure. Digital film is allowing people to make and use video in a very different way, a much more musical way, collaboratively speaking.
And do you think today is different to what you expect from other multimedia events?
This is free to the public. A lot of this kind of work preaches to its own audience. You need this kind of project where it’s free and people come for different reasons. Work designed to please a small elite is worthless. If the work means something and engages a wide audience then it will be around for years.
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