Brick By Brick: XR Lab at Riddel’s Warehouse

Medium:
Interactive Digital Experience: TouchDesigner

Venue:
XR LAB Showcase @ Riddel’s Warehouse
Digital Arts Studios, Belfast

Date Exhibited:
1 October 2026, Late Night Art Belfast

Description:

Brick by Brick is an interactive work responding to the architecture and material history of Riddel’s Warehouse.

I am a member of XR LAB, a collaborative group based at Digital Arts Studios, Belfast, supporting artists and creatives to explore and develop their practice using XR technologies. Extended Reality (XR) is an umbrella term encompassing augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR), immersive technologies that connect virtual and physical environments through audio, visual and interactive media.

In October 2026, XR LAB presented a showcase of ideas and projects developed by its members for Late Night Art Belfast, responding to Riddel’s Warehouse. The exhibition was curated by Angela Halliday and brought together artists who each approached the building and the brief in different ways.

The work uses projection to create a digital brick surface across an image of the building’s interior. As visitors move through the space, their silhouettes create openings in the brickwork, temporarily revealing what lies beneath.

I was interested in looking through the present surface of a historic building to what remains beneath, and in questions around seeing, preserving and remembering places whose original functions have changed.

The work was developed using TouchDesigner, with live camera tracking used to detect visitors and generate the changing apertures in the projected brick surface.

The exhibition brought together artists from XR LAB, each responding to the same building and brief in different ways. The resulting works explored the warehouse through architecture, industrial history, labour, memory, material processes and changing identity. I particularly enjoyed seeing how differently we responded to the space, while the works complemented each other so well when brought together in the warehouse.

Artists: Elaine McGinn, Martin Della Vecchia, Paul McCambridge, Abra Dickson White, Fionnuala McGowan, Gwen Stevenson and William Wong.

Presented by: Digital Arts Studios
Curated by: Angela Halliday
Venue: Riddel’s Warehouse, Belfast
Exhibition: XR LAB Showcase