Norwich University of the Arts Unveils ‘Mechanism’

Located at the heart of the University’s city-centre campus in the historic, Grade II-listed Bank Plain—a landmark building originally constructed in 1926 for Barclays Bank—Mechanism explores themes of industrial heritage, contemporary space, and the seamless fusion of art and architecture. The installation bridges the building’s storied past with its renewed purpose within the University, offering a thought-provoking reflection on its evolving role in the modern landscape.

Suspended above the Project Studio in the University’s Banking Hall, Mechanism is a 7.6-meter responsive artwork featuring an intricate aluminium framework, LED light clusters, and dichroic discs that transform the sounds of Norwich into a stunning daily light sequence. Data collected from city sounds via directional microphones is converted into rhythm and light, creating a dynamic dialogue between the energy of the city and the serene interior of the space.

Photography by Andi Sapey and Denisa Ilie

Andrew Kearney’s four decades of art practice are characterised by his exploration of everyday phenomena, queer culture, and a world of communities under surveillance. His installations emphasize the mediating role of the work within the space it inhabits. The works serve as disturbances, presenting themselves as incidents as much as physical objects, and in doing so, they reveal numerous underlying and unfolding narratives.

Kearney’s artistic process incorporates various mediums, including sound, lighting, sculpture, photography and ceramics creating multiple modular components within the installation, along with a range of technologies. This diversity allows for unpredictable rhythms and brings an ephemeral quality to the human aspects of the artwork. He often utilises external microphones, GoPro cameras, or video cameras to collect live data, merging this data with the manipulation of light, colour and sound to create a new synthesis within the installation space, blurring the boundaries between the familiar and the unfamiliar.

Candice Allison, Development Curator for Bank Plain, commented ‘One of the key challenges for the future of the banking hall as a library and public gallery is how do you take a space designed to be closed, secure, opaque – and reimagine it as somewhere open, accessible, and welcoming to our student community and the public. We didn’t ask Andrew to key into this question, as the brief to him was completely open ended, but that is what made the process of working with him so exciting, that he was able to capture this dilemma and channel it into his work in a very thoughtful and interesting way. Once you enter this building you become completely closed off to the outside world, but Andrew has created a window for us to the rhythms and pulses of the city outside.’

Mechanism is produced with support from electronic engineer Erik Kearney.