Future Shock transforms 180 Studios’s subterranean spaces through mesmerising and immersive digital technology – from generative and interactive algorithms, AI and 3D digital mapping, to spellbinding laser work, holographic projections and groundbreaking electronic music.

Featuring a line up of visionary artists – Ryoichi Kurokawa, UVA, Caterina Barbieri and Ruben Spini, Lawrence Lek, Actual Objects, Gener8ion, Weirdcore, Gaika, Nonotak, Ben Kelly, Hamill Industries, Ib Kamara, Ibby Njoya, Object Blue and Natalia Podgorska – who reimagine our near future with multiple new commissions, site-specific installations and vital sensory experiences that challenge our preconceptions and offer up new possibilities.

Devised and engineered by Barcelona creative studio Hamill Industries and soundtracked by an original score from Floating Points, Vortex is an interactive light, smoke and sound installation that generates a series of smoke rings, suspending our sense of disbelief and disconnecting us from our surroundings by visualising how music travels through air.

Currently installed at Fact and 180 Studios’ new exhibition Future Shock, Vortex is one of the last pieces encountered as you traverse the subterranean spaces underneath London’s 180 The Strand. Originally conceived for the 2016 edition of Barcelona’s digital arts festival, MIRA, the installation reacts to sound and generates an increasingly complex sequence of light patterns.

Caterina Barbieri, Vigil, 2022.

A sonic pioneer, the ground-breaking Italian electronic artist Caterina Barbieri presents her first installation, a multimedia collaboration with Ruben Spini, which creates a total environment, bringing together musical, visual and sculptural elements to explore the transformative power of sound and vision. A new commission by 180 Studios, the central element of the installation is a portal that symbolically connects to Barbieri’s idea of music as a gateway to transcending time and space.

United Visual Artists, Vanishing Point, 2022.

A new iteration of one of UVA’s most iconic and mesmersing installations commissioned by 180 Studios, Vanishing Point employs perspective as a tool to reshape and redefine a space, creating the illusion of light as a physical material. A laser carves through space to create different geometries, compositions and divisions within the room and transform our sense of perspective. The work’s behaviour is unpredictable and without repetition, fluctuating between states in which the beams glide calmly to more pulsing and energetic movements.

Future Shock

Exhibition Dates: 28 April – 28 August 2022
Opening Hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 11am – 7pm
Tickets: Adults: £20 /Concessions £15. Book now at the 180 The Strand website