Group Show: 'Cold Light'

Featuring the work of Lindsay Seers, Keith Sargent and Performance Electrics, the carbon-neutral power plant E-WERK has come up with the ambitious ‘Cold Light’ VR project and installation to lure people out to the industrial environs of Luckenwalde.

So often, virtual reality projects can be a rushed two-minute affair, but you can really savour this challenging 15-minute experience

Nikola Tesla, the Serbian-American inventor who did so much to reshape the modern world, is the focus of the exhibition, with a large-scale reconstruction of the designer’s esoteric vision for universal power. His failed mechanism to draw electricity directly from the air without wires or cables has been impressively reconstructed in the main hall of the building. Around it, VR stations have been created, inspired by the mysterious polyhedron from Dürer’s Melencolia I.

The VR film is a disorientating but wonderfully eclectic dash through space and time with a voiceover that enhances the mind-bending experience by interspersing philosophical musings with bizarre and seemingly random recollections – all to show the thought processes of the neurologically-diverse Tesla. So often, virtual reality projects can be a rushed two-minute affair, but you can really savour this challenging 15-minute experience.

Despite the project’s lofty concerns, the entire experience has a down-to-earth, crafted quality that befits the hands-on spirit of enterprise and invention of this fascinating space.