John Foxx, Durham Castle

8:44am Friday 20th June 2008

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DURHAM Castle's venerable Great Hall has never witnessed anything quite like it. A capacity audience was bathed in a swirl of colour - both visual and musical - when impressario John Foxx presented his Cathedral Oceans at the Durham Arts Festival.

Ever-shifting images projected on three screens depicted an array of stone faces draped in ivy, moss and lichen - all with haunting music which meshed perfectly with the display.

The genesis of this astonishing work (still in progress) came from a hobby Foxx developed more than 25 years ago, when he started taking photographs of ruins in gardens throughout Europe.

His creation chrystallised when he held two transparencies together and created a whole new image.

And by changing and multiplying them, he found he could produce something mystical.

This combined with a period in his musical career when he was exploring electronic music and the effects of sound in cathedrals.

Building on the theme, the two converged and with telling effect.

It was a shame the weather put paid to plans to project the images onto the walls of Durham Castle itself, but the Great Hall, once the largest in the country, proved an ideal alternative.

At one stage it felt as though the ancient walls would succumb, as they reverberated to a deep bass line which went to the core.

A haunting and moving experience.