Flock combined sound and projections with live motion tracking technology to place pedestrians within an ethereal corps de ballet. It was based on music from the opening of Act IV, when - in a staged version - all the principal protagonists are off-stage - an absence which, in this digital representation, invited the impromptu pedestrian performers to the fore.

Flock was one of KMA’s first interactive works, it explored the possibility of a theatrical engagement with impromptu performers, and examined, for the first time, the fluid relationship between those who interact as performers and those who watch as audience.

The piece was originally commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Arts in association with the Royal Opera House and premiered in February 2007 in Trafalgar Square. The piece received extensive media coverage including a live broadcast of the launch on BBC R4’s PM programme and, in the words of the then artistic director of the ICA Ekow Eshun, ‘offered a whole new realm for ‘live’ artistic experience’.

Ten years after its Trafalgar Square premiere, Flock was reimagined for the 2017 Singapore Night Festival, itself celebrating its tenth Anniversary.

The 2017 version of Flock was a new work made in the ‘spirit of version one’, retaining the original’s length (dictated by the choice of score) and sharing a similar thematic intention - of putting the audience centre stage.

KMA’s large-scale public installations have chosen to prioritise the illumination of people and their relationships over the lighting of buildings and structures. Rejecting the historical notion of the citizen as a passive spectator, KMA’s work celebrates the dynamics of human movement rather than the façades of historic buildings.

2017
National Design Centre, Singapore

2009
Peoples’ Square, Chongqing, China

2008
Williamson Square, Liverpool, UK.

2007
Trafalgar Square, London, UK.