STATIONSPLEIN
OUR BEATING HEART Studio vertigo
a mirrored heart of light
Our Beating Heart brings the principle of the mirror ball to life on a monumental scale. A huge, shimmering heart turns slowly, setting the square and the surrounding façades in motion in a dance of light. As you stand there, you watch specks of light dart across walls, windows and paving stones, sometimes even across your own silhouette, so many that you hardly know where to look or which one to follow. It feels as if the city is breathing to a different rhythm for a moment, a rhythm the artwork itself seems to set.
Audiotour
thousands of mirror pieces scatter light in every direction
Because the heart is covered in thousands of tiny mirror pieces, light is sent out in all directions. Everything around it becomes part of the same moving pattern, making the work feel like the beating heart of Utrecht Centraal. It is familiar and completely unexpected at the same time: an icon you recognise, brought to life in a new way that sets the whole place in motion.
As the heart turns, the light keeps changing. It moves with you, with the people around you, with the city itself. You are not only a spectator, but part of the reflection.
Mirrors, mirages, miracles
Studio Vertigo takes a powerful visual icon, the mirror ball, and scales up its familiar effect. What you usually see above a dance floor appears here in the middle of the city, in a form that draws the entire environment into the experience. For a moment, the square becomes one vast pulse of light, and you are standing right at its centre.
KUNSTENAAR
Studio Vertigo
Lucy McDonnell
Stephen Newby
Studio Vertigo is a multidisciplinary design and fabrication studio led by artists Lucy McDonnell and Stephen Newby. From their studio, they create light installations and sculptures for exhibitions and public spaces worldwide. For more than twenty years, Lucy and Stephen have worked internationally on large-scale projects with an experienced team of designers, engineers and makers.
Their work explores the tension between opposites in form, material and scale. Light plays a central role, not only as a technical tool, but as a way to shape space, rhythm and experience. Studio Vertigo is known for installations that are both powerful and refined, inviting audiences to experience their surroundings in a new way.
Studio Vertigo’s work has been shown at, among others, Durham Lumiere, Amsterdam Light Festival, Taiwan Lantern Festival and Vivid Sydney.
