Frameless is a unique immersive digital art experience that has been bewitching visitors in London since Autumn. A multi-dimensional entertainment space covering 30,000 square feet, Frameless spans a variety of genres and artists, allowing visitors to engage with the works through spectacular, high-definition imaging against a backdrop of both contemporary and classical music.
Helping people see some of the world’s greatest art in ways they’ve never seen it before and breathing new life into old masters, Frameless, curated by ArtscapesUK, is art free from the confines of a frame. You’re not just looking at the picture, you’re in the picture, with every brush stroke, every splash of colour, every inspirational moment.
The inspiration behind Frameless
Richard Relton, chief executive at Frameless, has had an extensive career within the sports, events and hospitality industries. He has worked with some of the world’s leading sports agencies, including the World Sport Group and Wasserman Media Group, as well as the Virgin Group and CSM Sport & Entertainment.
“Over the last 30 years, I’ve had involvement in event management, promotion, sporting events,” he tells blooloop:
“My curiosity was piqued from an immersive perspective when I was advised by a good friend of mine who was working with Cirque du Soleil at the time, to go see teamLab’s amazing Borderless experience in Tokyo. Like most individuals in the space, we were blown away, and thought, could we recreate something similar in the UK?”
It seemed, he says, to capture the imagination of the time.
“I was equally blown away by the breadth of the visitor demographic. I spent about an hour, at one stage of my second visit, just monitoring who was going in and out of the door. It was anything from the older generation right through to school kids, and everyone in between. It seemed that the immersive digital art space was increasingly popular, appealing to all age groups, and all demographics.
“One thing led to another, and the culmination is Frameless.”
Finding the right team
To create something on this scale, he explains, took several separate elements:
“We needed investment. We needed a phenomenally talented creative team, and we also needed a management team to put them together.”
A mutual friend introduced him to Scott Givens:
“It was a fortuitous introduction because Scott is one of the world’s leading creative producers of live and immersive content. We flew out to meet Scott when he was doing the opening and closing ceremony for Dubai Expo. He had also been researching the space very thoroughly in recent years and was looking to do something similar. He didn’t have the bits that we had; we didn’t have the bits that he had. It was a natural coming together.”
Givens joined Frameless as a shareholder and business partner, responsible for driving the creative content.
Frameless is a collaboration
Relton continues:
“What is so enjoyable, and, from my perspective, unique about Frameless is that it has been a genuine collaboration between interesting and quite brilliant people. All of us recognised that we’ve each got our individual strengths. We needed to create a team that would build something very different – something unique.
“I also crossed paths with Rose Balston, founding director of ArtscapesUK. Rose is an academic and art historian. I knew, at this point, that we needed someone to help us with the art curation. She was living in Dubai at the time, so when I went to see Scott I also met with her. Again, it was a very synergistic coming together.”
“Rose and her colleague, Rosie O’Connor in the UK, worked with Scott and his team to curate the narrative, the context, and the theme behind the four different galleries. Both Rose and Rosie played an integral part. What Scott does for all his big events and productions is to bring the best in class from whatever respective areas are necessary. He worked with the Artscapes team; Rose and Rosie helped navigate us through the journey.”
Bringing art to the people
Rosie O’Connor is creative projects lead at Artscapes UK & senior curator at Frameless. Having studied Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Exeter, O’Connor has a special interest in British Modernism, museology and accessibility in the arts. After leaving university she managed a commercial gallery in Mayfair, specialising in late 19th-century and 20th-century British and French painting and sculpture.
She then went on to the Open Senses festival, the first multi-sensory art festival, which honed her passion for programme curation and immersive art experiences. Adding her insights, she tells blooloop:
“As the curators of Frameless, we wanted to create an entertaining and inspiring experience for the masses. Focusing on European art, we selected well-known masterpieces as well as lesser-known artworks that are surprising and unpredictable. Each room has been carefully themed to take you on a journey through different eras of art.”
“However, we were not driven by a chronological narrative. Instead, we wanted to show connections between artists working centuries apart, using colour, techniques and subject matter. Using cutting-edge technology and original and existing music scores, we hope to create a powerful and lasting emotional response.
“For those that are new to art history, your Frameless experience is just the start of your journey. We hope to inspire you to go and see the original works – to learn more and ask big questions. And for those of you who are well versed in art history, we hope Frameless connects you to these artworks with fresh perspectives.”
An experienced team
As well as Rich Relton and Rosie O’Connor, Frameless is a collaboration between leaders in the technology, arts, architecture and experiential events sectors, including Scott Givens, chief creative officer of FiveCurrents and Frameless.
Givens has more than 400 events to his credit during the last 30 years, including roles in 15 Olympic Games. He has been a recipient of the Olympic Order, the highest honour afforded by the International Olympic Committee. His productions have been recognised by numerous industry awards, including the Emmy Awards and Telly Awards.
Simon Kentish is chief technology officer at Frameless. Tech entrepreneur and digital transformation expert, Simon lives to deliver transformational projects, event platforms, and new immersive technologies. Together, with founding partners Richard Relton, Andrew Wells and Scott Givens, he has overseen all the technical components and partnerships to deliver Frameless to Marble Arch Place.
What makes Frameless unique?
Frameless offers the opportunity to be immersed in artworks. Relton qualifies this:
“What was important behind the thinking of Frameless was to try and move the sector forward. I think it’s fair to say the term ‘immersive’ is a very broad term. It’s used a lot, and, we didn’t really want to be part of that bracket, or we’d be aligned with everything else. What we set out, in the beginning, to do, was to try almost to create our own movement, our own production, so Frameless would become synonymous with a particular form of projection or technology.
“Scott’s answer lay in creating a product which had no rival. It wasn’t an extension of some of the other major shows that exist around the world.”
He identifies the areas where Frameless differs from other experiences:
“One thing is that we’re multi-artist, where most productions focus on Klimt or Van Gogh – an individual artist. We’re multi-tech. Each of our galleries is using a different form of technology. We have over 40 masterpieces now, across four galleries; 28 different artists. It’s a unique move away from the traditional methodology that has been employed around the industry for the last few years.”
Powerful projection technology
Frameless signed a strategic partnership with Panasonic, a market leader in large-scale installation projection, which is utilising the London venue as its global flagship showcase. With over 50 of Panasonic’s best-of-breed 3-Chip DLP laser projectors, the art inside Frameless is delivered by an incredible 479 million pixels and 1 million lumens of brightness and vivid colour.
Frameless is also collaborating with Creative Technology’s UK Systems Integration team in sourcing and integrating all tech equipment. Audio is supplied and integrated by Autograph Sound.
Ground-breaking techniques used in the galleries include mirrors and wrapping projectors in mirror foil to give the effect of visual infinity, using six-sided projection to place visitors at the heart of an almost spherical land, sea or cityscape and using semi-transparent screens in a darkened room to create a maze of content in which to lose oneself.
Audio and visual experiences
“Technology can become outdated quickly,” Relton says. “We wanted to make sure that every aspect of Frameless was future-proofed so it would have longevity and relevance in the years to come.
“From a technology perspective, we took advice and did our own diligence. We had a very competitive projector shoot-out. Panasonic were head and shoulders, in our opinion, above the rest: definitely the leader in this field. They have been on board from the start, very much part of the curation from a technical perspective.”
“We also wanted to raise the bar from an audio perspective. The sound quality in each of the rooms is extraordinary. In terms of the curation and editing of the sound, it’s almost as if the artist has created the soundtracks for the pieces, it all fits together so beautifully.
“Scott has this incredible network of individuals that he’s worked with over the last 14 or 15 Olympic Games. So, he’s able to pull in, from his knowledge, the best people to do the best job. This is a really special best-in-class collaboration.”
The visitor experience
Concerning the length of the experience, he explains:
“If you walked into all of the four galleries and watched all of the original content, the experience would last for 70 minutes.”
However, in practice, people stay much longer:
“It’s a nice problem to have.”
He outlines the visitor journey:
“Your experience starts during an amazing kaleidoscopic descent, over two floors on the escalator, before you even arrive at the ground floor. That experience has LEDs, music, and digital content, so it’s pretty special.”
The 30,000-square-foot space consists of four galleries. Each of these is dedicated largely to a specific artistic movement, and an educational area, where visitors can learn about the history and context of each painting, or dive deeper by scanning a QR code to find out more.
“Our thinking was very much, though, that once you go into the galleries, it is pure entertainment. Other shows may have content and educational sound bites, but ours is very much about entertainment. You couldn’t imagine four more different rooms and experiences.”
The four rooms of Frameless
Beyond Reality is an exploration that takes the visitor from surrealism to symbolism and beyond, employing ingenious design to create a mind-warping perspective. Colour in Motion begins with the Impressionists, charting their descendants, and featuring advanced motion tracking. This allows visitors to put their own ephemeral stamp on the art showcased.
The World Around Us draws visitors on a globe-spanning adventure through famous city scenes and landscapes, exploring several artistic schools. Meanwhile, The Art of Abstraction, a multi-layered maze, celebrates abstract art.
Developing unused urban spaces
To an extent, Frameless is an attraction that speaks to the way urban spaces are evolving.
He comments:
“What we have got now with a lot of vacant sites is some very large open spaces. We know from the conversations we’ve had that there are lots of retailers and developers around the world who recognize the need not only to fill that space but to do so with activities that will draw in visitors.”
“What was key for us was the need to have a certain ceiling height. That is quite a difficult criterion to find. We also wanted, where possible, a pillar-free dynamic. In the end, we were blessed in terms of the space that we managed to find. It was going to become five cinema boxes, which are pillar-free and vast. We did look at other spaces before we found the Marble Arch location, but none of them was perfect. The space that we have is unique.”
“What is also interesting is that there are some very successful attractions that are not in ideal central locations. There is an argument which says if the proposition is strong enough and if the offering is of a really high nature, then people will go to wherever it is. I think that’s proved by the success of other operators in the space.
“That said, I guess the holy grail for everybody is to find the ‘wow’ space in a ‘wow’ location. We were very lucky to match the two. From a location perspective, it is nigh on perfect.”
Frameless looks to the future
Though Frameless is still very new, there is, he says, a growth strategy.
Before it could be deployed, however:
“We needed to assess the reception of Frameless, which has been absolutely incredible. It is a testament to Scott and the team he put together. We haven’t held back on any aspect, whether it’s the technology, the staff, or the experience, from day one.”
“Our goal was to raise the bar and create an extraordinary experience. As a consequence, the indications are that we have got something quite special. It can be dropped into any developed city around the world, and you wouldn’t need to touch the product. It’s very special.”
