Layers of the Old Dock (2017)

“Hidden beneath Liverpool ONE is the Old Dock, the first commercial wet dock in the World. From this place, Liverpool as an international port and multicultural city sprang. Explore the many layers of the Old Dock with your smart phone or tablet.” – excerpt from Layers of the Old Dock promotional leaflet.

Layers of the Old Dock was an interactive 360-degree artwork designed to be viewed on mobile phones. It resulted from a collaborative project exploring how the character of various locations across Liverpool (UK) could be evoked through sound (and images). I explored the use of spherical panoramic photography to complement spatial soundscapes, including of Liverpool’s Old Dock – the first commercial wet dock in the World, now largely hidden underneath the Liverpool ONE retail and leisure complex. One of the artworks I created was the Layers of the Old Dock, an artwork that used historical and contemporary images and sounds, layered onto spherical photographs of the Old Dock and the pedestrian thoroughfare above it, to encourage visitors to explore the site’s overlapping historic and present-day character on their mobile phones.

The artwork attracted the interest of Liverpool ONE who subsequently sponsored the installation of the artwork at the Old Dock from April, 2017.

View an online version of Layers of the Old Dock.

I coordinated the collaboration that produced this artwork, which included Professor John Bowers, Professor Magnus Williamson and Dr Tim Shaw of Newcastle University; the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT), and Kinicho.