Djanogly Art  Gallery 'Highfields Lido' Installation

 

In summer 2017, we helped the Djanogly Arts Gallery make a splash in celebration of 25 years of Nottingham Lakeside Arts, with a large-scale immersive installation that reimagined a key piece of local history.

Installed in the Djanogly Gallery, the project paid tribute to the old Highfields Park Lido — once Nottingham’s largest outdoor swimming pool and located on the very same site. Visitors were taken on a sensory-rich journey through time, diving into a visual narrative that flowed from the Lido’s opening in 1924, through its final summer in 1980, and on to the opening of the Djanogly Gallery in 1992.

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We fully transformed the 130m² gallery space using:

• Eight projectors and two media servers for floor-to-ceiling coverage

• Two Kinect cameras to enable interaction within the environment

• A cast of 13 life-size synchronized swimmers, digitally animated to appear both in and out of the water — creating the illusion of movement, depth, and playful choreography across the space
   

The interactive elements were brought to life through bespoke programming by Noel Murphy, who developed a system that allowed the audience’s presence and movement to subtly influence the installation — adding a layer of responsiveness that gave the space a sense of living memory.

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The result was a vivid blend of archival homage and digital artistry — an evocative, immersive dip through the decades that connected past and present through light, sound, and motion.

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DJANOGLY GALLERY - LAKESIDE ARTS