The exhibition ‘PLAYTIME’ presents images from Lakeman’s childhood memories from Fort Regent Leisure Centre. Will has dedicated the exhibition to his late brother Matthew, the brothers used to spend most of their time up at the Fort as Will states that “those were the best of times for us.” The exhibition displays a range of images of the fort made from artificial intelligence (A.I) which are an attempt to recreate Will’s childhood memories from his point of view.

Lakeman wanted to recrate his childhood memories of Fort Regent through a series of images. Will “didn’t care if the images he created weren’t correct/ didn’t fit other peoples memories of the Fort because he wanted to portray how he remembers the fort. The images link back to the theme of nostalgia as it will bring back many old memories from the ‘good ol’ days’ for older generations. It will also allow them to explore whether their memories of the fort were different to Wills as the A.I images may not match what they remember. The exhibition made me feel nostalgic in a different way, as there were a variety of images such as ones that I could relate to as it’s how I remembered the Fort and ones that I’ve been told stories about by the older generations. When looking at the variety of different images, the images that made me feel a strong sense of nostalgia were the ones that showed the Fort how I remembered it; Such as ‘Rampart Angles’ which showed the iconic blue flooring along the upper floor of Fort Regent which was bordered with a red railing. It brought back my own childhood memories, from when I would run along there when playing with my friends.

Will had different sections of his exhibition, In one of the sections, there were a series of images displayed on a light board. This cause the images to glow, exaggerating the vivid colours in he image which are exactly how Will remembers the memories.

Throughout the exhibition, there were three different scents that Will thought related to each section exhibition. For example there was a swimming pool scent where Lakeman has displayed his photos showing his childhood memories from the swimming pool. Will had also made a custom sound scape to fit the exhibition which made it unique and made me feel like I was able to visualise what Will’s memories looked like.

Will used A.I to create most of the images seen at the exhibition, using tools such as the ‘text-to-image’ generators. Will used this tool to generate images that linked back to his memories which have a unique outcome.

My thoughts:

I enjoyed the exhibition because it was different to other exhibitions as it had multiple aspects such as the soundtrack, scents, arcade game, darkened room with lightboxes. I found the different elements of the exhibition made it more interesting and interactive in a way as you could really try and visualise what Will was trying to show. The exhibition brought back some of my childhood memories and showed me what the Fort used to be like, as I have heard stories about it from older generations.