:00:30. > :00:37.Environmental public arts specialists NVA have taken things a
:00:37. > :00:40.step further. For 20 nights, audiences of 800 people climb 700
:00:40. > :00:45.feet to the summit of Arthur's Seat. I don't know any other event with
:00:45. > :00:50.the same level of ambition. For up to four hours, runners in white
:00:50. > :00:53.suits run in choreographed sequences on the path network below.
:00:53. > :00:58.At points, I thought this is the most complicated thing I've ever
:00:58. > :01:00.done. Speed Of Light is the most physically challenging event for
:01:00. > :01:10.off the audience and performers ever staged at the Edinburgh
:01:10. > :01:16.
:01:16. > :01:24.I ran as a way of life. I run the to sort my head out. I run to stay
:01:24. > :01:31.young. Or younger. I run as a way of making work. It's a good way of
:01:31. > :01:38.making sense of the world. Speed Of Light is Hill runners on one of the
:01:38. > :01:43.greatest mountains in Scotland. The idea is that they will run on a
:01:43. > :01:49.nightly basis Indies' incredible hand-made suits. As they are
:01:49. > :01:53.creating these patterns of light, an audience, creating their own
:01:53. > :01:58.patterns, moved to the summit of Arthur's Seat. As they move up, and
:01:58. > :02:03.looked down on these runners, animating the path network and
:02:03. > :02:09.choreographed lines, they begin to see them just as lines of energy,
:02:09. > :02:13.as dots. You lose the human and it becomes about something bigger. Or
:02:13. > :02:18.smaller. It could be the inside of an atom or something on a stellar
:02:18. > :02:24.level. It becomes extracted. It is just the sheer beauty of looking
:02:24. > :02:31.down from the smart and top. Seeing the energy of running, the
:02:31. > :02:38.insurance. The willpower, manifestos light. That is the fag
:02:38. > :02:42.packet for urgent. -- version. main thing is the dynamism. Whoever
:02:42. > :02:46.is at the outer edge of the explosion, comeback at the same
:02:46. > :02:51.time. The sharper your group are, that communicates the image. That
:02:51. > :02:57.is being seen as tiny dots of light from any quarter of a mile through
:02:57. > :03:03.dark space. If a few Adair but others carry on, it just feels a
:03:03. > :03:08.bit when are we. The more it is like, get there, turn, it is all
:03:08. > :03:13.about sharpness. That did what makes it look really good. This is
:03:14. > :03:18.a really big moment. After two years of planning, tonight we get
:03:18. > :03:25.the light suits for the first time. There have been six different suits.
:03:25. > :03:31.We are on mark 6. Tonight, we get 120 light suits, 240 runners. We
:03:31. > :03:34.get a chance to put them out of the hill and see what it looks like. I
:03:34. > :03:44.know what is going to be an interesting piece of work. But is
:03:44. > :03:46.
:03:46. > :03:50.it going to be a great piece of Each performance of Speed Of Light
:03:50. > :03:56.is designed for over 200 runners. Taken from a pool of over 4000, all
:03:56. > :03:59.of whom have signed up for the event through the internet. It just
:03:59. > :04:04.seemed really interesting. I fancied a shot of the light suits
:04:05. > :04:09.as well. It's something different. Today is a chance for some of these
:04:09. > :04:13.volunteers to try out the equipment and for the organisers to test
:04:13. > :04:22.there logistics of the performance. You can put that higher, if you
:04:22. > :04:26.want. Just so it gets into the small of your back. We have never
:04:27. > :04:31.seen choreography in white suits on the hill. It's the first time I'm
:04:31. > :04:35.going to see it live. That is a big part of tonight as well. There is
:04:35. > :04:40.no guarantee any of these runners will be fit enough or that any of
:04:40. > :04:44.them will choose to return in August. It looks very interesting.
:04:44. > :04:49.Let's see whether we will like it or not. And when we come back,
:04:49. > :04:52.whether we will do it or not. show time, during the Edinburgh
:04:52. > :04:57.International Festival, each and every performance will rely on a
:04:58. > :05:03.new set of runners. The only regular runners throughout if the
:05:03. > :05:10.20 performances will be the 31 running leaders. We are going to
:05:10. > :05:13.head up there and do some hand signals. When the leader puts the
:05:13. > :05:23.arm down, that is the firefighter. It is a random run between two
:05:23. > :05:24.
:05:24. > :05:28.people. Can we do it? Just run, anywhere that you want to go.
:05:28. > :05:32.pleased with that. We had good spacing. Everybody seemed to
:05:32. > :05:38.memorise the signal. We are one of the flat at the moment, we will see
:05:38. > :05:43.what it is like up on the hill. Speed Of Light is the 10th
:05:43. > :05:53.environmental art performance conceived by NVA. It is by far the
:05:53. > :05:55.
:05:55. > :06:01.most challenging and ambitious. stands for National active life. It
:06:01. > :06:10.is the idea that you make the society that you are in. You take
:06:10. > :06:16.part, you have that right, you have that potential, as an individual.
:06:16. > :06:20.It is a term, denoting that, really. This is where the individual
:06:20. > :06:24.becomes part of this mass, collective thing. This is show
:06:24. > :06:27.conditions. I need you, individually, to commit to really
:06:27. > :06:32.working hard on the hill. If you feel like walking, you should not
:06:32. > :06:39.be here. It is a serious undertaking. If you walk, it slows
:06:39. > :06:47.the whole section down. That means that sequence, in lighting, goes
:06:47. > :06:52.out of sync. Then that the patterns that are being made that dark
:06:52. > :06:56.joyous 16,000 -- the public, that are paying for the ticket, there
:06:56. > :07:01.will be going... Well, it's all right. I think I will go and get a
:07:01. > :07:11.cup of tea. We are extremely excited to be here. Remember,
:07:11. > :07:21.
:07:21. > :07:26.safety, concentrate and give it Anyone can have a good idea. I can
:07:26. > :07:31.say, great, let's send a lot of people running around Arthur's Seat
:07:31. > :07:37.in light suits. Without these immensely talented and tenacious
:07:37. > :07:41.people, none of it would be a reality. I was kind of intrigued by
:07:41. > :07:45.this. It's not normally the thing that we do. I do a lot of work in
:07:45. > :07:49.film. I remember rocking up there and they had sent me an e-mail
:07:49. > :07:56.saying that we were going to be going on sight. In my mind, that
:07:56. > :07:59.was, like, like a film style reconnaissance where you jump in a
:08:00. > :08:05.car, hop out with a camera and take a couple of pictures. But they
:08:05. > :08:08.meant actually hiking up to the top of Arthur's Seat. I remember coming
:08:08. > :08:16.down and I had totally inappropriate clothes for it. They
:08:16. > :08:19.were, like, did you get the e-mail about hiking, the wet-weather gear?
:08:20. > :08:27.I went to an animation company had worked with a lot before on the
:08:27. > :08:32.film side of things. Initially, we did something quite complex. First,
:08:32. > :08:38.we created a three-dimensional version of the hill, that was
:08:38. > :08:43.accurate. We created little animated runners in white suits.
:08:44. > :08:47.Normally, as a choreographer, it is very visceral, it is very hands-on.
:08:47. > :08:57.You're dealing with people. This was most challenging, in the sense
:08:57. > :09:00.
:09:00. > :09:08.If you think about each of our runners as an individual white
:09:08. > :09:12.sauce, we have a battery in a little waist pack. -- light source.
:09:12. > :09:16.Each of them is like an individual light source that you can control
:09:16. > :09:23.through a conventional, wired system. We are making pictures with
:09:23. > :09:29.these runners on the dark hillside. You have a group from this side and
:09:29. > :09:33.that side and you want them to meet at the same time. But one are going
:09:33. > :09:38.up hill, the other acme downhill. It's a complete the different
:09:38. > :09:44.amount of time. If it is on a flat space, you just say, each do eight
:09:44. > :09:48.steps and get to the centre. I colour-coded the maps according to
:09:48. > :09:54.elevation. This is the downhill map. This is downhill, intermediate.
:09:54. > :10:04.Just to get a sense. Then I could start drawing patterns which are
:10:04. > :10:14.
:10:14. > :10:21.This is the most important rehearsal so far. Intensity? All at
:10:22. > :10:25.fault, I believe. We will never see them in these light conditions.
:10:25. > :10:35.This is way lighter than we would do the performance. Let's go for it,
:10:35. > :10:46.
:10:46. > :10:50.That's not even a hard path! That is the easiest. One of the issues
:10:50. > :10:55.is the runner's fitness. People sign up for a hill run and then
:10:55. > :10:58.there is a path that is basically horizontal. In the first two
:10:58. > :11:05.minutes, people are walking on the easiest path on the entire hill.
:11:05. > :11:10.Already, they are completely at a sequence. I'm here already. We are
:11:10. > :11:16.quite far behind. Thank you. There is not much that you can do about
:11:16. > :11:26.it. That's beautiful. And this isn't even a good sequence! This is
:11:26. > :11:26.
:11:26. > :11:29.the one we were thinking about cutting! Why does it work? The
:11:29. > :11:39.things that you thought were going to work do not work. The things
:11:39. > :11:54.
:11:54. > :12:02.that were not that good, are really If you see any incoming groups,
:12:02. > :12:12.pass that message on. I'm close to cutting it. It's a hard call. Can
:12:12. > :12:14.
:12:14. > :12:18.you ask Orange how conditions are? A sleet storm and 30 mph wind is
:12:18. > :12:25.presenting a dilemma. To abandon or continue the rehearsal? Have we
:12:25. > :12:29.ever had whether this bad in August, in all honesty? Yes. We would like
:12:29. > :12:35.you to come out of the holding area. This is a total change to the
:12:35. > :12:41.choreography you have got. Come along the C path, then go along the
:12:41. > :12:46.audience path. I do go to the marquee... Or extend and go back
:12:46. > :12:54.down. Or go back down, depending on conditions, or over. Could you
:12:54. > :12:59.We are three-and-a-half months off the show. The suits work. We know
:12:59. > :13:02.what the problems are. It means we have to simplified its that are
:13:02. > :13:07.complicated. It was very important to work in bad conditions. Only
:13:07. > :13:12.through that, if we had a benign night and everything just danced,
:13:12. > :13:15.and then we hit August 9th, 30 mile per hour of wind and driving rain
:13:15. > :13:25.and we are facing that for the first time... It is always better
:13:25. > :13:26.
:13:26. > :13:34.to have bad weather. It's a gift from God! I wouldn't go that far.
:13:34. > :13:39.As safety concerns grow, Angus decides to call a halt. If there
:13:39. > :13:45.was not any risk, we would be doing cinema. It's very easy, the analogy
:13:45. > :13:50.I always used his that live events, they are live. When you buy your
:13:50. > :13:54.ticket for the event, you are taking a risk. What is exciting
:13:54. > :13:58.about the work is that. At a very basic level, we are all excited by
:13:58. > :14:08.the idea of making a collective effort, taking the risk and
:14:08. > :14:17.
:14:17. > :14:23.It will be warm her in August. worse it got, the funnier it was.
:14:23. > :14:29.Was it the right decision? Did we pull it too soon? It was the right
:14:29. > :14:35.decision. It was wet and windy, but as soon as we got running, it was
:14:36. > :14:43.fun. The gap between how the final work should be and what I saw
:14:43. > :14:47.tonight is really quite big. The choreographer and the lighting
:14:47. > :14:53.designer need to sit down and we need to strip it back and say what
:14:53. > :15:02.is working and what is not and go with what is working, keep it
:15:02. > :15:12.simple and allow the whole thing to breathe. Part of the team is
:15:12. > :15:13.
:15:13. > :15:21.resonance FM, a left-field radio station. Come on in. We are
:15:21. > :15:25.providing the sound aliment. station's ethos is quite
:15:25. > :15:32.experimental, so we are always broadcasting kind of works in this
:15:32. > :15:37.kind of area, so we need to take as many opportunities to produce work
:15:37. > :15:47.like this as we can. They are designing this remarkable little
:15:47. > :15:47.
:15:47. > :15:53.system. It is quite simple on its own. These tones will be contained
:15:53. > :15:59.on the audience light sticks and as they walk to the summit and hit a
:15:59. > :16:06.certain altitude the tones will kick in. By moving the like stick
:16:06. > :16:13.you modulate the sound. They might tip the sticks lightly. It is
:16:13. > :16:18.shifting tonally and shifting by the movement of the Walker.
:16:18. > :16:28.analogy would be to take a gigantic church organ, pull out all it stops
:16:28. > :16:35.and then drag it up a cliff. There is 800 in the audience and they are
:16:35. > :16:45.each given one of these and they liked the way and they create a
:16:45. > :16:45.
:16:45. > :16:49.snake like an animal. I am happy with the sticks and the suits. You
:16:49. > :16:54.imagine in your head what a number of sticks is going to look like and
:16:54. > :17:04.you just do not know. But when we saw them on their help it was a
:17:04. > :17:12.
:17:12. > :17:17.great feeling, yes it works and it With two months until the Edinburgh
:17:17. > :17:24.Festival, they organise another rehearsal of Speed Of Light. I have
:17:24. > :17:30.no doubt that some will turn up who are not really prepared. They may
:17:30. > :17:36.be prepared in their minds, but it will be extremely tough. We are
:17:36. > :17:40.going to push them to run in time and to run hard. If they do not, it
:17:40. > :17:49.will not be as good a piece of work for people watching and the gaps
:17:49. > :17:53.will appear and the whole thing will not flow. Every show during
:17:53. > :17:58.the festival will have a different set of volunteer runners, so it is
:17:58. > :18:04.down to the leaders to ensure the performances run smoothly on the
:18:04. > :18:08.hill. You are still performing and people are still watching you.
:18:08. > :18:14.is not about speed, but that dynamism of the basic running
:18:14. > :18:20.movement. Visually what we are seeing is really strong. The areas
:18:20. > :18:23.of pattern-making that were not working a couple of months ago are
:18:23. > :18:29.starting to fill out and the movement over the hill is much
:18:29. > :18:39.stronger. Although it is tougher to manage, it is beginning to work in
:18:39. > :18:48.
:18:48. > :18:58.terms of linking back to the Go away. Back in. Very good.
:18:58. > :19:20.
:19:20. > :19:30.HEAVY BREATHING. Get ready to sparkle. Brilliant. Do not go too
:19:30. > :19:46.
:19:46. > :19:49.far. This is your last one, come It is looking fantastic. They are
:19:49. > :19:55.doing this for the first time, runners who have never been on that
:19:55. > :19:59.hill before in darkness, in light suits and they are creating the
:19:59. > :20:09.patterns we imagined. I cannot be objective about it, but for my
:20:09. > :20:18.
:20:18. > :20:27.money it looks pretty good. It is a It is good now have. We have sorted
:20:27. > :20:30.out the choreography and we have sent out a film letting people know,
:20:30. > :20:35.letting the 4000 runners know what they are letting themselves in for,
:20:35. > :20:39.so we are getting a lot of cancellations. That is great, it is
:20:39. > :20:45.what we intended. It is August and the task of managing a different
:20:45. > :20:50.set of runners every night becomes a reality for the leaders. This is
:20:50. > :20:56.a show, there are 800 paying audience members and the runners as
:20:56. > :21:01.well and you have a responsibility. Although you might be a little cog
:21:01. > :21:07.in a machine, you have got the responsibility. Running on a hill
:21:07. > :21:17.at that time of night will be a different experience. It is a great
:21:17. > :21:20.honour to be able to take part in it. It has been a huge undertaking
:21:20. > :21:25.for NVA and the project has been in development for at least three
:21:25. > :21:29.years, and that has involved not only building up the partnerships
:21:29. > :21:33.with our funders and our stakeholders like Historic Scotland
:21:33. > :21:37.to have given us permission to work on the site, but the project has
:21:37. > :21:45.grown in terms of the number of people we need to deliver the
:21:46. > :21:50.project. I thought it would be a fantastic way to experience are
:21:50. > :21:54.they seat with the light and everything else. It will be
:21:54. > :21:59.beatable being on top of Arthur's Seat combining the geology and the
:22:00. > :22:06.like. We will see how it works out in the end. It will be fun because
:22:06. > :22:16.I'd have got friends who went up to the top when they were students,
:22:16. > :22:26.
:22:26. > :22:29.but they didn't have any light and Welcome to the Speed Of Light...
:22:29. > :22:38.the first audience of the night get their safety briefing, the runners
:22:38. > :22:42.take to the hill for the start of the performance. Going up RSA seat
:22:42. > :22:48.in the dark is a wonderful experience and something you feel
:22:48. > :22:53.you should not be doing. Just going up there is incredible and the view
:22:53. > :22:57.of Edinburgh is astounding. The other thing is being part of a
:22:57. > :23:07.group of people with the sticks creating this strange, Centipede
:23:07. > :23:17.
:23:17. > :23:21.like creature going up the hill, so 20 and go. The performance begins
:23:21. > :23:31.and as the audience walk through the valley they get their first
:23:31. > :23:44.
:23:44. > :23:54.I think for me it has always been about contrast, contrasting the
:23:54. > :23:56.
:23:56. > :23:59.natural and the a symmetrical with the ordered and the symmetrical.
:23:59. > :24:04.People will have an amazing experience, whether they connect
:24:04. > :24:13.directly with the work a lot, they will appreciate the effort and
:24:13. > :24:23.understand and appreciate the individual runners within that.
:24:23. > :24:42.
:24:42. > :24:46.are doing really well so far. One, Before reaching the summit the
:24:46. > :24:54.audience will pause to contemplate the performance below. Their light
:24:54. > :24:58.sticks are designed to emit sound on approaching this viewpoint.
:24:58. > :25:08.psychological way you think there is a correspondence between these
:25:08. > :25:36.
:25:36. > :25:41.distant, flickering figures and It is very important not to see
:25:41. > :25:47.this as a piece of theatre or a big show or a spectacular. It is a very
:25:47. > :25:52.low key piece of work, a very gentle piece of work. To get the
:25:52. > :26:02.most out of it you have to sit and settle down and allow these images
:26:02. > :26:16.
:26:16. > :26:20.to gently build up and dissipate For me this is the duration of
:26:20. > :26:27.sculpture, it is work that is unfolding and lighting a landscape
:26:27. > :26:33.slowly over time. It is a subtle piece of work. It is expensive, it
:26:33. > :26:38.cost over �1 million. And that has created a piece of work that will
:26:38. > :26:42.probably now travel the world. We are already getting contacts from
:26:42. > :26:47.different parts of the UK and we have got delegations coming from
:26:47. > :26:52.Rio de Janeiro to see it, so we may take it out to the Olympics in four
:26:52. > :26:58.years time. At the summit of Arthur seat at the tops of the light
:26:58. > :27:05.sticks are removed and become part of a sound and light sculpture. The
:27:05. > :27:08.audience then make their way off the hill. Many people looking at it
:27:08. > :27:14.will see different things, depending on what they have read
:27:14. > :27:24.and what they had seen. Some people see it in an abstract way and other
:27:24. > :27:25.
:27:25. > :27:31.people have references. I do not know if it was what I expected to
:27:31. > :27:35.see or not. I have enjoyed it a lot. I think the runners are fantastic.
:27:35. > :27:41.They have put a lot of effort into it and it has turned out really
:27:41. > :27:45.well. It is about honest graft and the incredible effort that has been
:27:45. > :27:51.made both by our team and the runners. Beyond whether you think
:27:51. > :27:56.it is good art or not, ultimately it is about that endeavour.
:27:56. > :28:02.certainly has been an experience. I think maybe what the directors
:28:02. > :28:07.intended us to take but it was not what I took from it. For me it is
:28:07. > :28:11.too small scale. I think you need many more people dressed up. But
:28:11. > :28:16.Edinburgh is a very beautiful and inspirational place and that is
:28:16. > :28:20.what will stay with me, I think. cannot pretend everything is
:28:20. > :28:24.perfect for everyone. It is real life and some people get it and
:28:24. > :28:30.some people do not. What you are hearing now is the cheering from