Hull city centre is set to light-up during a spectacular three-day event celebrating the city’s rich seafaring heritage this month – while predicting the weather will never be the same again, thanks to an eight metre “fantastical” lighthouse that will stay in place until March.
Navigate, featuring mesmerising sculptures and outdoor exhibits, will celebrate the start of ‘Hull: Yorkshire’s Maritime City’, an ambitious £27m project to regenerate visitor attractions reflecting Hull’s 800-year maritime heritage.
While three installations – featuring laser beams and kinetic sculptures – will be on display 30 January until 1 February 2020, a specially commissioned lighthouse linked to the Met Office and showing weather predictions, will stay in Hull until March.
Designed to highlight the city’s cultural heritage and strong artistic identity, and catapulted by the success of Hull City of Culture 2017, all four installations will create stunning displays across the city.
Highlights of the three-day event, from the acclaimed Kazimier team, will be a string of powerful lasers shining beams of light from Hull City Hall creating a visual line in the night sky for Meridian; while Queen Victoria Square will be home to a chorus of kinetic sculptures ‘Zenith’, producing an immersive sonic landscape of the sea. Trinity Square will host ‘The Pendopo’, a sound and laser installation containing a remarkable robotic musical instrument inspired by the metallic sounds of East Asia’s Gamelan percussion ensembles
For more ideas on what to do in the city, read Hull : a Surprising City of Culture.
The fourth installation, ‘Oracle’ – an eight-metre lighthouse that will display updated weather predictions – meanwhile, will remain until March, reflecting superstitions and the importance of weather for those venturing to sea.
Specifically commissioned for Navigate, it will float in Prince’s Dock and be linked wirelessly to meteorological sensors and the Met Office, so that it can display a weather omen predicting conditions for the next hour with a dynamic audio visual performance.
‘Hull: Yorkshire’s Maritime City’, is the city’s latest major project, with £27.4m set to be invested in the city’s maritime site in the next few years, celebrating Hull’s 800-year maritime heritage. It is jointly funded by Hull City Council and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
The project will highlight Hull’s remarkable journey as a global powerhouse for trade and cultural exchange, and its connections to the rest of the world through its role as a major, thriving port city.
Scheduled to be completed in a phased approach, with the full visitor experience expected by 2024, the project will see the refurbishment and preservation of four historic maritime sites, and two historic ships, with new improved visitor attractions.
For more information about the maritime City project https://maritimehull.co.uk. For more details of events and visitor information, see www.visithull.org.
