360-degree view

Thousands of silicon rods transform the centre of Camden Roundhouse’s huge turning shed turned arts and exhibition venue into an immersive screen, writes Eleanor Young.

For his installation Curtain Call designer Ron Arad has suspended 5600 silicon rods from the 18m diameter ring; he talks about being engulfed in the image. Walking into the darkness of the huge circular space you can see the projections running around it: lines kinked as if combed with a sound track booming out (from Stephen White), a crudely unflattering cartoon of a naked man trudging and belching around it (David Shrigley’s Walker) or Matt Collishaw’s decaying tropical jungle in a thunder storm.

After surveying the rods and the specially commissioned films from the outside you can duck through the curtain of rods, sending little quivers through the next few seconds of film as the 8 metre drops of hanging silicon rearrange themselves.

As with other grand installations like at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall and Baltic in Newcastle, this makes for a different way of experiencing the space as inside the curtain of the screen people sit or lie looking up at the changing images all around them. A million times better than flat-screen video art.

Bloomberg Summer at the Roundhouse presents Ron Arad’s Curtain Call, to 29 August, www.roundhouse.org.uk