David Bowie is among the names honoured in a “Sistine Chapel” of musicians recreated for the first time in 25 years at Tate Modern.
Korean artist Nam June Paik used 40 projectors to make the huge kaleidoscope collage for the 1993 Venice Biennale and it is so complicated it has never been tried since.
Curator Valentina Ravaglia said the mixture of randomly selected images from clips of Bowie and other performers including Janis Joplin and poet Allan Ginsburg along with a soundtrack made up of snippets of performances could be “overwhelming”.
She said: “It’s an immersive landscape of projections that surrounds you from low down near the floor to over your head covering nearly all of the ceiling.
“It is quite overwhelming, I didn’t quite know what to expect myself because I’d only seen a corner with five or six projections in and without the sound but to see it full scale and with the full on soundtrack is quite something.”
Paik, who died in 2006, is regarded as the godfather of video art and was at the forefront of using new technology in art including robotics.
Nam June Paik runs from October 17 to February 9 at Tate Modern.
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