Space Station, 2013

Exhibited at Old Street Underground station, London, Jun 2013 - May 2014.

Exhibited at Big Deal No.7: Space 2016, London, Dec 2016.

I was commissioned by the Greater London Authority and Transport for London to link Old Street Underground station with the surrounding tech sector. I created a bespoke lightbox that visualises live data on train arrivals and departures. It was designed to match the station's distinctive tiles.

This was part of an exhibition with designer Karin von Ompteda, which also included a special lighting track, and a gallery of photography and posters, all intended to evoke the station’s past, present and future – and the future of the past. Making way for the supremacy of the automobile (with a giant roundabout), the station and pedestrians were moved to what was to become a new utopian underground. This was the time of Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and these visions of the future can still be read within the architecture: our concept was ‘Old Street Space Station.’

Construction: For continuous operation during one year, the electronics included an Arduino Uno, Roving Networks RN-XV WiFly module, Adafruit LED pixels. Here is the code for data input and LED control.