CODAzine is highlighting the public art community to share stories about leading creative professionals and the innovative art they are creating. This series of interviews is presented by SNA Displays.
This month, we feature This is Loop | Public Art Studio — the collaborative artistic partnership of artists Harriet Lumby and Alan Hayes. They have built an international reputation for delivering ambitious, large-scale experiential installations that merge art, technology, science and architecture. Harnessing reflection, illusion, immersive technologies and engaging in scientific narratives to transform public spaces into captivating environments.
How did This Is Loop come to be, and what’s the story behind the name?
Harriet and I both studied art subjects throughout our education and have in one way or another always had creativity at the core of everything we have done since then. However we both properly cut our teeth working for various creative teams in the events and festivals industry. Essentially we spent many years unpacking, installing, deconstructing and packing away other peoples sculptures and large scale art installations and got to learn an extensive amount about what works and more importantly what doesn’t. This ultimately led to us putting all that knowledge into making our own artworks.
The name is another story….. We basically went through tons of names until we eventually landed on one that both Harriet and I didn’t dislike - Loop Studios - then got told that we couldn’t register the name as it was too similar to an audio production company that already existed, so we had to modify it which is how This is Loop came about. More a product of necessity than considered choice in the end, but here we are.
Your installations often merge light, sound, and architecture. What draws you to immersive public experiences?
"We’re both really interested in how environments influence people and how that effect can be shaped by the elements you introduce into a space
This became especially apparent to us when we created our piece Toroid which was born out of the pandemic period. We were looking for a way to create something new using only existing parts. Our installation Pulse consists of a series of huge mirrored rings, so we decided to arrange them into a circular formation rather than its usual tunnel format. Since then, we’ve been able to observe how the same parts of an installation, arranged in different configurations, can completely change how people interact with the artwork. Pulse encourages movement through the space, while Toroid invites viewers to linger and engage more contemplatively. Each installation evokes a completely opposite response from audiences.
But overall it’s great to enable people to be removed from their awareness of their surroundings and be transported somewhere else. Those points of full engagement with an artwork provide moments of escape, a way of being present and taking in influences that might spark thoughts or considerations that wouldn’t have manifested otherwise. If people walk away from a space thinking slightly differently than when they arrived, we can feel like we’ve achieved something.
How does a location inspire the concept, or vice versa?
On the whole, most of our pieces are non permanent touring artworks, so we tend to design purely just for the concept as inherently it will end up being exhibited in many different locations. What's really interesting is how the locations then respond to the artwork. We love seeing how the introduction of an art installation can completely change the dynamics of a space and how people use and interact with it.
For site-specific work, the location often plays a major role in shaping the concept of a piece. Examining a space’s historical uses, for example, can provide a source of inspiration and a strong starting point for developing a narrative/story/a piece.
Collaboration is key in large-scale work. How do you approach working with cities, festivals, and technical partners?
Couldn’t agree more with this statement but I would add that communication is the foundation of good collaboration. We’ve found over time that the higher quality your communication, then the more concisely things get brought together. Ambiguity is always where problems stem from so we strive to make sure that we have always turned over all the stones to check what's underneath, no matter how trivial they may seem. It can sometimes be a tiny oversight that compounds into a larger scale issue.
Ultimately the best relationships are always forged when everyone involved in a project has a smooth and enjoyable experience leading to a great end result. Which is why we try to operate in a manner whereby we are at our most efficient and completely autonomous when it comes to being on site and installing an artwork, this is where meticulous planning communication become key, you can't plan for the things that have not been mentioned!
Flexibility and open mindedness are also important, sometimes things just don't work out how they were planned and that's ok. Sometimes things not working out how you thought can lead to unexpected positive outcomes that wouldn’t have otherwise been explored.
Sustainability and durability are big challenges in public art — how do you address those in your projects?
We try to look at this holistically as we think that the two are often directly linked. For example, using a material like plastic is generally considered to be a non sustainable and environmentally damaging material. However used sparingly for certain elements of a piece might mean that we minimise or eradicate the requirement for maintenance or replacement of parts over the artwork's life span. Which in balance can be a better outcome from an environmental aspect compared to the time, energy, materials and travel it might incur otherwise. It’s always a balance and all aspects have to be taken into consideration, not just the obvious.
On the whole though, we try to choose materials that are suitable for an application in terms of strength and durability and can either be broken down and reused by ourselves, or one’s that have great recyclability inherently like Aluminium which can be infinitely recycled.
All this said, what's paramount with public artworks is durability. It's always astounding to see the innovative ways the public find to inflict damage to a sculpture.
What project has challenged you the most creatively or technically, and what did you learn from it?
Emergence was an exceptionally demanding project from a technical standpoint. It brought together a diverse range of materials and processes, each presenting its own set of challenges. We were determined to achieve the aesthetic finish we envisioned, which pushed us to think creatively and solve complex problems along the way. When you see the piece on exhibit, it doesn’t appear particularly complicated, but once you understand what was required to achieve it, that’s a very different story.
In terms of learning experience, I would say that there isn’t a project that goes by that we don’t learn a lot from but this one especially highlighted that it’s always the corner you cut that you end up revisiting again and again.
How do you envision the lifecycle of your public art (maintenance, aging, adaptation)?
This needs to be an answer of two halves as we design differently for touring works than we do for permanent. They both have very different design and use requirements and as such need different approaches.
Generally speaking we give our touring artworks an expected lifespan of approximately three years, this is what we design for anyway, but in reality we’ve found that they tend to live on past that, one of our pieces has been touring for nearly ten years now! As previously mentioned we make decisions at the design stage to ensure durability and this feeds directly into the lifespan of the pieces.
In reality we’re probably over-specifying for the intended lifecycle, but even with that in mind, things always need maintenance. A touring artwork needs to be assembled and dismantled over and over again, endure the rigours of transport via air, sea, train or truck and be subjected to environmental extremes from desert heat to snow covered tundra and as a result there is a lot of wear and tear. This has to be considered at the design stage to enable maintenance later on, especially if you’re trying to perform it in an awkward position with frozen fingers..
These issues are not quite as prevalent with a permanent piece, but due to its permanence there are different considerations to be made. The desired lifespan for a permanent work can often be 10yrs+ so material choices and how they are finished becomes a paramount concern in terms of longevity. The piece will be designed with the physical installation being a one time consideration, which simplifies a great deal of things.
In what ways do you track or evaluate the artistic and social impact of your work?
We often ask for any data that may have been collected across an exhibit to give us an idea of attendance figures and what demographics are coming to see our work. It’s helpful for us to be able to feed that data into proposals for new works especially, not only to provide usage data to a prospective commissioner for a permanent piece but also to temporary event organisers. Metrics like footfall can be very useful to illustrate what sort of financial benefits there might be to the local vicinity from bringing artworks into city areas, which in turn can help organisers gain more support from funding sources like business improvement districts, local councils and sponsors.
How do you build your creative team (fabricators, assistants, collaborators)?
Our core team has been built with people we have worked with for many years, they understand the whole process from conception to delivery which in such a niche market is very valuable to us. In terms of external contractors we have a trusted pool of people who are all highly skilled and experienced that we can draw on to bolster our team as and when we need to.
We’re very fond of collaboration with other artists and industry experts and we have done so for many of our projects. Sometimes this might be working with an audio artist/s to create the soundtrack for a piece, like we did with the NYX electronic drone choir for Emergence where they took our concept and created a hauntingly stunning sound scape. Other times it can create links in completely different fields, like our piece Geist for instance. This saw us working with some of the world’s leading particle physicists and scientific organisations to qualify the conceptual basis and to give us access to real data from neutrino detectors to drive the audio and animations for the piece.
Looking ahead, what excites you most about the future direction of public art?
Democratisation of the arts enabling free public access for individuals of all ages, backgrounds and socio economic groups is somewhere I think (and hope) we will see great change in the future. Lots of scientific study has gone into looking at the results of public art projects and how they positively benefit communities, in particular when it comes to well being. So I would like to think that we will see new building developments, municipal projects and the like including publicly accessible artworks on a much broader scale as a result.
Additionally, one of the fastest changing aspects of the world in general is technology and this always brings new opportunities. As new possibilities open up with the advancement of technological systems it inherently enables artists to try using tech in ways that might not have been foreseen with its original intended application. I imagine that we will see some amazing uses of technological systems in public art projects in years to come.
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