Behind the Façade: Building a Performance-led Mapping at Casa Batlló, from Concept to Implementation
Tuesday 3 February, 15:30, CC4.1 - FREE TO ATTEND
A case study of UVA’s Casa Batlló commission, Hidden Order, covering the end-to-end process from creative concept and visual language, and the challenges of working within an unusual context, through to technical implementation.
The keynote explores how close reading of the architecture becomes a set of creative rules, how a performance led approach shapes timeline and pacing, how a wide range of technical artisans and specialists coordinate across disciplines, and how real world constraints influence both aesthetic and engineering decisions.
It also connects the façade mapping to the companion exhibition, showing how studies and tools evolve into standalone works.
In this keynote, Matt Clark walks through the Casa Batlló mapping commission from first impressions and concept through research, prototyping, content systems, technical design, show control, and onsite delivery.
He will outline how UVA translates architectural logic into a controllable visual system, and how technical artisans and specialists carry the work from studio tests to implementation on the building.
He will also show how constraints shape composition, and how the companion exhibition, Behind the Façade, extends the mapping into independent works that can be experienced slowly.
About the mapping
Hidden Order is a new façade mapping commission for Casa Batlló in Barcelona: a time-based audiovisual work that treats the building as both subject and instrument.
Starting from Gaudí’s relationship to geometry and nature, it breaks the façade into structural building blocks and recomposes them through light, motion, and sound.
Choreography is integral to the work, using human movement as a compositional driver. The piece moves between figuration and abstraction, and between the human and the architectural, with real-world constraints shaping both the visual language and the technical design.
Sponsored by ISE, Hidden Order takes place on the evenings of Saturday 31 January and Sunday 1 February.
About the keynote speaker
Matt Clark is a British artist and the founder and principal artist of United Visual Artists (UVA), a studio he has led since 2003.
His work uses light, code, sound, and choreography to shape time, space, and perception, typically translating hidden systems into a physical experience.
His work has been presented internationally at leading cultural institutions and in major public venues.
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