Nick's big Heart

By Penny Martin, 13:49 Tue 16 Oct 2007

4_unveiling.mp4

Today saw the unveiling of Channel 4's first 'Big 4'; a 50-foot-high metal structure of the British TV channel's iconic logo positioned outside its HQ on Horseferry Road in London's Victoria. Big 4 will have four different incarnations during Channel 4's 25th anniversary year, the first being Nick Knight's 'Heart', which this film shows Britain's Minister of State for Culture, Media & Sport, Margaret Hodge helping pull the tarpaulins from this rainy morning. In a brief statement read by Channel 4's Chief Exec Andy Duncan beforehand, Nick said the idea for the piece was to reflect the channel as a multicultural, responsive entity.

And for this, he has created an impressive infrastructure of 9-step lenticular screens bearing the skin and musculature of eleven different bodies. What at first seems like a slick reworking of a corporate ident becomes altogether more interesting as you turn your head, walk toward the structure or perhaps pass by on a bus: in response to your movement, the bodies appear to gently heave and writhe to a subtle heartbeat soundtrack created by SHOWstudio contributor Nick Ryan.

Heart will be in place over the next three months, before Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui, British artist Mark Titchner and then a young artist (yet to be discovered in a Saatchi Gallery competition) each get their turns.