Photos: The laser lightshow reflecting on a decade of UK broadband
Virgin Media mixes a cocktail of light and sound...
Virgin Media has commissioned a laser lightshow called The Speed of Light to celebrate a decade of broadband connectivity in the UK.
The company claims to have installed the first broadband connection in Blighty back in the year 2000, when ISP NTL - now part of Virgin Media Business - hooked up Mark Bush in Gillingham, Kent.
Photo credit: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com
The art installation was created by United Visual Artists and is on show in The Barge House exhibition space, close to London's South Bank, until 19 April.
Photo credit: Chris Beaumont/CBS Interactive
Light in the form of coloured lasers and audioscapes are used to explore themes of communication and modernity. Pictured above is a laser light projection in the first room of the exhibition which encourages visitors to speak into a microphone.
Photo credit: Chris Beaumont/CBS Interactive
Their voices are recorded and played back in an altered, processed state.
Photo credit: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com
Recordings taken here are also played back periodically throughout the rest of the exhibition, creating soundscapes containing echoes of things said before.
Photo credit: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com
Visitors take stairs up to the top of the Barge House, making their way through a series of pitch-black rooms each containing a different light and sound installation.
Photo credit: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com
The installation in this room resembles a living room - with sofa, coffee table and a TV screen on the left - a space that is also close to cable-TV company Virgin Media's heart.
Photo credit: Chris Beaumont/CBS Interactive
White and coloured lasers project the length of this room, alternately resembling the strings and frets on the neck of a guitar, while loops of sound inject a cocktail of pre-recorded words.
Photo credit (top): Chris Beaumont/CBS Interactive; (rest): Natasha Lomas/silicon.com
In another room red lasers create and animate an emoticon - which flickers from a smiling face to a frown in the blink of an eye.
Photo credit: Chris Beaumont/CBS Interactive
In the last room visitors are treated to a dancing array of coloured lasers mixed with snippets of pre-recorded conversation.
Photo credit: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com