Illumini Event 2010: Through Adversity to the Stars

 Illumini Event

'Secret Subterranean London'  

9th Sept 2010 - 15th September 2010

Open 7 days a week 11am-7pm free.
Shoreditch Town Hall









































'Night Flight’ is a poetic interpretation of the Cabinet War Room’s map room made out of paper. During World War II, Bellerophon mounted on a winged horse Pegasus was adopted as the emblem of air bourne forces.
                             
The sound  is from a 1942 BBC recording. Beatrice Harrison, a leading cellist of her generation had the habit of playing her cello in the wooded garden of her cottage in Oxted, Surrey, near London. One evening in 1923 she was joined by a nightingale and was so enchanted by the sound that she persuaded Lord Reith, the director of the BBC, to broadcast the cello-nightingale duet on live radio. Accordingly on May 19, 1924 the first ever live outdoor broadcast was arranged

On May 19, 1942, three years into the Second World War, the BBC was back in the same garden planning to broadcast the nightingales (sans cello). But 197 bombers, Wellingtons and Lancasters, began flying overhead on their way to raids in Mannheim and the engineer realized a live broadcast of this event would break security. The recording went ahead anyway since the lines to the BBC were open and a two-sided record was made, the first side with the departing planes, the second with their return (eleven fewer).