a few years before his death in 2016 our small and at the time slightly Scrappy Design Studio was charged with taking the world changing body of work created by David Bowie and turning it into a museum exhibition that would speak to newcomers and die hard fans alike we’d never designed an exhibition before we’d made stage shows we’d worked in live music we’ made films but lacking any direct experience we wondered what might happen if we took those genres that we did know and mashed them together into a single immersive audience experience in a museum what might happen if forms and ideas were allowed to collide well today we are living in the age of immersion but what does that really mean well technological advances have always led to new forms of Storytelling if you think about the amphitheater or the printing press or Celluloid or the internet but now new possibilities for storytelling are emerging faster than any other time in history and as they do they provoke us as storytellers to experiment with new kinds of narrative experience experiences that touch all the senses that play with dramatic scale or heightened intimacy to help audiences feel more now many of these experiences are supercharged by technology but the very best of them aren’t defined by it the power of the story rather than the novelty of the hardware remains the key throughout his career David Bowie resisted calls to stick to one genre or even one art form he was the very embodiment of the Collision of ideas so in thinking about how to tell his story it seemed fitting to look at his work through a kaleidoscopic lens constantly shifting fractured but always luminous the first thing we did was to abandon any sense of a traditional linear narrative and instead we collaged together a whirlwind of objects costume props music and image to create a form that felt true to Bowie’s Magpie like mentality that celebrated the Collision of ideas now the exhibition was a kind of prominade through a a Cubist portrait of the artist leading to a finale of live performance that we hoped might some somehow capture some of that intangible magic that truly great performers can cast on their audiences now we couldn’t literally recreate a Bowie gig and we didn’t really want to either so instead we set out to conjure the the energy and emotion of one oh no love you’re not alone Boe sang in this his last ever performance of Zuki Stardust and 40 years later for a few brief moments we weren’t alone it felt like he’d returned to [Music] Earth and you’re not alone just turn on with me and you’re not [Applause] alone give me your hands cuz you [Music] from a star man of one kind to Star men of another in 2019 we were asked to help Mark the 50th anniversary of one of humankind’s greatest achievements the Apollo 11 moon landings but what format might allow us to evoke the scale and the spectacle of the apollo1 mission but also to immerse audiences in the barely believable story of the four 400,000 women and men who’d helped put humans on the moon and how at a time of real Division and pain how might we bring people together in much the same way that the crowds had gathered to watch the rocket launch back in that red hot summer of 1969 it had to be big it had to be audacious bordering on the impossible as the mission itself was in conversation with our colleagues at the Smithsonian Museum an outrageous idea emerged the Washington Monument the world’s tallest Obelisk which stands at the foot of the mall in DC is it turns out almost the exact height of the satin 5 rocket an act of Congress was required for the project to go ahead and permission from the White House didn’t arrive until the day before rehearsals were due to start but against all the odds over two sweltering nights 500,000 people gathered to watch as a 100,000 tons of marble appeared to blast off into the night sky captivated not only by the spectacle but also by the story of how through the Collision of science technology curiosity and courage humankind had achieved The Impossible sending three men a quarter of a million miles to the Moon I’m bringing them safely home [Music] again the Collision of ideas behind shows like David Bowie is and go for the moon allowed us to tell other people’s stories in novel ways but what might happen if one created a new kind of hybrid storytelling experience that had at its heart a true collaboration with a living working artist might that kind of collision lead to a new art form well the artist we dreamed of working with was David hawne So in 2019 I wrote him email and within a few weeks we were together in this farmhouse in Normandy and for a few days we chatted and he smoked boy did he smoke you know someone’s a keen smoke when they’ve got at least two cigarettes on the go at any one time but sitting in this studio we spent several hours leafing through the Sumo sized book of his paintings and as we did David talked about his work with the undimmed pride of a child showing their parents the crayon drawing and he agreed that maybe there was something in this new form we were discussing part exhibition part theater show part documentary that might lead him to something interesting something new in 2020 in February just before the pandemic lockdown David joined us in a freezing cold Warehouse on the outskirts of East London to look at some of his work projected at scale and he was thrilled by the size but also by the color the brightness the Vivid Hues and as we flush through a selection of his work projected 50 feet tall on the bar brick walls David talked about his process about the decisions he’d made in composing the paintings about how hard it is to make memorable pictures and that was when the idea for the show emerged what if we could recreate this moment David Hackney sitting next to you talking in his warm mischievous Yorkshire lilt about a life of making art as his work unfolds before your eyes when I arrived here I couldn’t drive at all and within a week I’d got a driving license i’ bought a car I’d got a studio I thought oh this this is the place for me the only voice that you hear in the hourong ersy show is David’s but that might be David speaking in 1968 about the quality of the light in Los Angeles or David in 2007 talking about the challenge of painting his giant Yorkshire Landscapes the young David in conversation with his older self you’re invited to listen as well as to watch as images appear all around you now we worked closely with David for almost 3 years during which time he came to think of the show as a work of art in its own right by him it was a hawne together we’d found an approach that allowed him to reach new audiences to share his process in new ways and to give people unparalleled access to his creative process in the show 30 projectors and a Cutting Edge sound system fill the space with image and sound and hundreds of David’s paintings drawings sketches operatic set designs and photographic works are woven together with voice over music and sound design to create a guided tour led by the artist himself through six decades spent looking closely at the world and enjoying every moment of it oh wow I’ve painted for 60 years now I’m still painting um and I’m still enjoying it [Music] enormously yes [Music] [Applause] that’s David’s motto right there words to live by so what does the future of immersive entertainment look like is it VR AR XR AI the truth is that none of us know but those technologies that might otherwise threaten to isolate us can actually be harnessed to bring us together and not just as audience members but also as creators because making immersive work calls for a richly multidisciplinary approach one that creates the conditions necessary for the Collision of ideas to take place an approach in which Architects and animators directors and designers writers and technologists are brought together as if in a kind of cultural Large Hadron Collider a machine in which multiple disciplines can be accelerated towards one another in the hope that the resulting Collision might release something new something energetic something that has the power to change the direction of the bodies involved 4 1 we thank you [Music] [Applause]