The thoughts of people in Central Scotland who are living with dementia have helped formulate two digital artworks at Forth Valley Royal Hospital – one based on clouds, the other reflecting land through which dreams flow.
The £15,000 project, a commission for an older artist, was secured by Artlink Central through the Baring Foundation’s Arts and Older People programme and has been created by Fife-based digital artist Elizabeth Ogilvie who worked with film-maker Rob Page.
Her decision to create a cloudscape in the atrium and a gentle landscape for an inpatient ward was helped with support from a local artist living with dementia. Alzheimers Scotland’s ‘Brain Gym’ in Camelon, which brings together a group of people affected by the disease, also talked about landscapes that were important to them and offered advice on camera shots and movements to help make the film as accessible as possible for people with dementia.
The work was supported by Serco who installed the final projections.
Cloudgate, the digital artwork in the atrium, takes the form of a projected moving image on to a voile theatre screen which will then cast further back onto a second screen.
Artist Elizabeth Ogilvie explained: “The initial thinking for the installation in this location was inspired by my first visit to the Forth Valley Royal Hospital site with its enormous skies. And through research, experimentation and development of the concept, the final work is a more conceptual notion of the whole water cycle – ice crystals, snow, clouds, rain, mist and distribution as raindrops splash into a river and then the whole cycle starts again – a life cycle, a continuum.”
The ward based work projects three digital screens to create a triptych of slow moving landscape images that are like paintings. They play out slowly and feature someone walking across the scenes providing a connection between each work. The films operate on a loop and feature birdsong.
