The experience is a fully immersive portal to the past; visitors can walk freely throughout a digitally reconstructed room, and are able to touch the bespoke vitrines, fixtures and mouldings; even the heat from a coal fire is recreated. Infrared sensors track visitors’ movements, creating ghostly avatars that indicate their position and enhance the feeling of travelling through time. Collishaw has also created a soundscape to accompany the exhibition: the demonstrations of the Chartist protesters who rioted in 1839 on the streets of Birmingham, and who can be glimpsed through the digital windows. Thresholds not only restages an important historical exhibition but provides a way to view images that have since been lost to the public.
until 11 June 2017
Mat Collishaw, Thresholds
Somerset House
Strand, London