Presented by venue Bristol Beacon, the digital experience premieres tonight at 7pm (BST).
Scalping are launching a new audiovisual project entitled Intermission. It’s a collaboration with creative multimedia studio Limbic Cinema as well as Bristol Beacon – the historic concert venue formerly known as Colston Hall.
Bristol Beacon has been undergoing a transformation of its performance spaces since 2018, with the venue due to fully reopen in 2023. Ahead of time, Intermission offers an exclusive opportunity for audiences to access the venue’s physical spaces remotely.
The experience itself was created by the award-winning Limbic Cinema studio, which is also based in Bristol. Limbic Cinema has pulled together various technologies and design elements used across architecture, gaming and live performance in order to bring the project to life, toying with the boundaries between the virtual and the physical. For example, the studio has created 3D models of the interior spaces using photogrammetry – a process that involves taking thousands of photographs and stitching them together, resulting in a textured 3D model of the currently publicly inaccessible spaces.
Music for the project is lifted from Scalping’s Flood EP. The record – which was released earlier this year via Houndstooth – has been remixed and manipulated specifically for the experience, with an uninterrupted version of the EP soundtracking audiences’ virtual explorations.
Speaking on their involvement in a statement, Scalping said: “This project gave us an opportunity to revisit our recent EP Flood, originally recorded before the pandemic, and pull the songs apart to rework them into a seamless piece of music which reflects how we perform live. It was an incredibly cathartic process during a time when live performance was completely impossible”.
Meanwhile, Todd Wills, artistic director of Bristol Beacon, said: “We regularly work with Limbic Cinema and discussed doing a digital project whilst we were in lockdown that was more ambitious than just a live stream of a band. We understood that audiences in lockdown had access to multiple online cultural events but much of it was the same format. We wanted to create something that was more visceral and exciting.”
“Limbic and Scalping are both Bristol-based,” he added, “and this project is also a way to support local creative business and artists after a difficult year.”
Intermission premieres this evening, 13 October, at 7pm (BST). Discover Intermission here and revisit our feature on Scalping.
