DigitasLBi Launches AM:PM:AD Timelapse

Global marketing and technology agency DigitasLBi is launching AM:PM:AD Timelapse, an innovative live installation at the Barbican which aims to bring to life the past and future through sound.

The project is part of Hack the Barbican, an experiment in cross-disciplinary collaboration bringing together artists, technologists and entrepreneurs to reinterpret the Barbican, one of the world’s great cultural centres.

Hack the Barbican will host dozens of discipline-bending installations, performances, workshops and discussions. The participants include painters, computer scientists, sculptors, hardware hackers, teachers, musicians and everything in-between.

As part of Hack The Barbican, DigitasLBi’s blended team has created AM:PM:AD Timelapse – an innovative installation featuring a 24-hour clock with historical dates mapped to real time, exploring the Barbican’s past and future through sound. Each time of day becomes the equivalent year. So at 13:48, visitors tucking into their lunch will hear the Black Death erupt around them, and at 19:40 they’ll find themselves in the middle of the Blitz.

AM:PM:AD Timelapse will be live in the foyer of the Barbican’s Silk Street entrance during opening hours (9am until 11pm) from Saturday 10th to Friday 16th of August, and 24 hours a day on the accompanying website. 

Images for the project were supplied by Bridgeman Art Library, and was sound design by Altitude Music.

Kevin Mar-Molinero, Creative Technologist at DigitasLBi, said: "When we were invited to Hack the Barbican we jumped at the chance. An opportunity to create a sonic time travel experience in such an iconic space meant we had to pull together a crack team of creative experts. Added to that was the challenge of building a real world 24-hour clock that wouldn't look out of place in the Barbican foyers. I'm really excited about the result!”

Victoria Trow, Creative at DigitasLBi said: "To have an installation we've made from scratch on display in one of the most iconic buildings in London is a dream. It's the Barbican. And we've made something that's going IN the Barbican! The team have been incredible, everyone has got on with it and made it happen in just one week. I can't wait to tell my nan. She doesn't get what I do, but she definitely knows what the Barbican is."