Sphere of ‘moonlight’ over Glastonbury offers revelers some heavenly art

SPHERE hung moon-like in the night sky over the ‘Common’ area at the world’s largest and most legendary greenfield music festival, as part of the celebrations for its 40th birthday. First created by Beveridge and exhibited in a different material twelve years ago, SPHERE has been re-imagined and re-engineered by Matteblak, working closely with the DuPont™ Corian® team, to exploit the purity, formability, structural integrity and ethereal translucency of this high-performance material. Suspended by crane in a carefully constructed steel cradle and measuring an impressive 12ft in diameter, the installation creates an optical experience based on the phenomenon of ‘whiteout’ where there are no gradations of light in the visual field.

Matteblak, who specialise in merging art, architecture and contemporary construction materials to create truly unique projects, chose to work with Corian® as it offered the opportunity to apply and develop their use of a five axis ‘CNC’ engineering programme to design and fabricate the seamless joints and the ‘perfect skin’ essential to realising the lighting concept.

Perhaps one or two festival goers may have imagined they were hallucinating, as the sculpture’s appearance ‘phases’ in both brightness and form, alternating between the perception of a sphere and a disc, but whether in rave or chill-out mode, they could enjoy the extra dimension of inspiration that the artwork brings to the celebrations.

The mesmerising luminosity and appearance of ‘infinity’ is achieved by three light rings hidden by a lip and following the circumference of the interior. Experienced at ground level, the viewer standing close to the sculpture is surrounded by an even illumination. Sensitive time adjustment and integrated fading of the three colours chosen for Glastonbury – white, yellow and red to emulate sun set and moon rise – complete the effect, reverberating at different speeds as the entire structure was slowly raised and lowered.

After casting its spell as a beacon of calm and contemplation over the ‘Love Garden’ every night from 10pm to 6am during the Glastonbury festival, SPHERE will feature at further art events later in the year.