Ben Johnson's Liverpool Cityscape 2008 and the World Panorama Series

Excellent exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool showing this series of detailed city panorama’s by Ben Johnson.

In particular it focused on a new panorama of Liverpool from the waterfront commission for the European Year of Culture. It shows both existing and planned buildings in exquisite detail and it was lovely to see local people enjoying it and pointing out where they lived and worked to friends. I had a great conversation with the lady next to me talking about what the new buildings were as it is 23 years since I lived in the city.

A super video showed you how the picture was created and a computer simulation took you through how it grew and let you focus in on particular features. In the next room there was a sequence of older panoramas of the city to compare to the new vision.

It had a real sense of being a work of art created for a city.

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Independent
Liverpool Echo

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