Herald

About

Herald is a chimera combining creatures significant to the history of Two Temple Place: the Astorga falcon, serpent, lion, and bulldog found in the visual identities of later owners. 

Animated in augmented reality and imagined with the help of artificial intelligence image generator DALL-E, Herald embodies the spirit of the building - both as an advocate of the latest technologies of the day, and as a psychic imprint of Astor, the owner's desires to escape people and places he felt did not understand him, to retreat into the romanticised worlds of bygone eras and popular literature - ones filled with adventure, fantasy, and courtly love. 

When Herald is activated, it escapes its bodily vessel like a genie, issuing forth from its own phallic trumpet-like horn. It spirals up the grand staircase, spilling rose petals from this horn onto viewers below, and circles infinitely under the stained glass ceiling, surrounded by friezes of other worlds and other lives - like Astor, it seeks to transcend its base reality and float among legends of myth and history.

Exhibited at
Inside, Two Temple Place, London (28 Jan - 26 Feb 2023)

Photography © BJDeakin