Skip to main content
Topics

Arts & culture

Series

Two singers, a guitarist and a keyboard player play onstage to a large crowd, backlit by an LED lighting display that looks like a rainbow
  • Arts & culture
  • Civil & structural
  • Issue 100

How ABBA Voyage was made

ABBA said they’d never tour again. Bringing them back required a technological marvel, a fully demountable arena, and an array of engineering disciplines working in tandem to make it all come together. Leonie Mercedes goes on a voyage to explore the engineering behind the show.

Silver ballbearings group together inside a shape and reflect in the mirrors
  • Arts & culture
  • Issue 99

How a photographer turned innovative engineering ideas into art

This year, the MacRobert Award – the UK’s longest-running prize for engineering innovation – celebrates its 55th anniversary. Having been commissioned to create a set of images to mark the award’s 50th anniversary in 2019, photographer Ted Humble-Smith has once again created photographs that capture the thought processes behind some of the winning innovations.

Quick read

  • Arts & culture
  • How I got here

Q&A: The Bakineers

Ingenia spoke to three of the eight (!) engineers who’ve starred in the Great British Bake Off: Andrew Smyth, Giuseppe Dell’Anno, and Dr Rahul Mandal, each of whom are living proof that engineering and baking happily co-exist.

Quick read

  • Arts & culture
  • Technology & robotics
  • Innovation Watch

How AI can unearth archaeological sites

Humans from long ago have left all kinds of marks on landscapes. An AI tool from startup ArchAI, could help find these ancient traces.

Quick read

A soundsystem made from wood, painted red and green with "Hertz So Good" on the side.
  • Arts & culture
  • Sports & leisure
  • How I got here
  • Issue 92

Q&A: Stan Jones

An opportune moment led to a career designing adventure playgrounds (and a soundsystem for Shambala Festival on the side) for Stan Jones.

Quick read

The Charon Zoetrope is pictured against a red sky, with all of its skeletons around the edge visible in silhouette form.
  • Arts & culture
  • Mechanical
  • Issue 92

Reimagining the zoetrope

An installation from the 2022 Greenwich+Docklands International Festival is a life-sized, vertical zoetrope that uses time-honoured engineering principles to display a stunning three-dimensional short animation.

Two artists, one on a ladder and one crouching, who are working on a replica of a Raphael painting next to a table of art supplies.
  • Design & manufacturing
  • Arts & culture
  • Technology & robotics
  • Issue 92

The technologies that recreate historic artworks

Did you know Churchill's wife once set a portrait of him on fire because he hated it so much? Factum Arte used modern technology to recreate it, so it lives to see another day – sorry Clementine.

Quick read

  • Software & computer science
  • Arts & culture
  • How does that work?
  • Issue 91

How do NFTs work?

Love them or hate them, NFTs took the art world by storm in 2021. But even this far into their explosion in popularity, many people still have no idea what they are and how they work.

Quick read

Ryan Mario Yasin in the studio behind a desk. He holds a ruler over his clothing designs and clothing samples can be seen on the desk in front of him.
  • Environment & sustainability
  • Arts & culture
  • Innovation Watch
  • Issue 91

Clothes that grow with children

By the time they reach the age of two, babies go through seven clothing sizes, only adding to the fashion industry’s impact on the planet. London-based Petit Pli is on a mission to lessen the burden, with childrenswear that grows with the wearer.

Someone in a motion capture suit, who is controlling the motion of a woodland avatar on a digital animation in the background.
  • Arts & culture
  • Sports & leisure
  • Issue 88

Entertaining audiences of the future

In 2019, a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Challenge Fund, Audience of the Future, was launched to explore how immersive technology could transform audience experiences. During COVID-19 they used their technology to bring these experiences into the home.

Quick read

A pair of glasses made from food waste on a stand.
  • Environment & sustainability
  • Arts & culture
  • Innovation Watch
  • Issue 86

From food waste to fashion

Chip[s] Board is turning potato peel into sustainable bioplastics for the fashion and interior design industries to simultaneously tackle the problems of food waste and plastic pollution.

Quick read

A microphone with headphones and a desk in the background with an iMac computer on it running an audio editing software.
  • Arts & culture
  • How does that work?
  • Issue 84

How does MQA technology work?

MQA technology captures and authenticates the sound of the original master recording in a file small enough to stream at high resolution, allowing listeners to feel that they are in the studio with the performer.

Dancers on a stage performing in the "singin' in the rain" musical, pointing umbrellas towards the ceiling. Water is falling down on them and they are splashing in puddles of water as they dance.
  • Arts & culture
  • Issue 83

Making it rain on stage

We’re not talking about the stuff outside. No – we’re talking about the theatrical kind, made specially for the production of Singin’ in the Rain. The show’s highlights are two dance sequences in the rain on a flooded stage, which posed logistical problems for its designers. Just how did they do that?

  • Arts & culture
  • Design & manufacturing
  • Issue 82

From brass to recyclable plastic - the reinvention of musical instruments

The brightly coloured trombones made of recyclable ABS plastic, pBone, weighs less than a kilogram and costs a tenth of its metal cousin. It's driven a demand for a range of polymer-made instruments, including a trumpet.

Quick read

Two hands playing the ROLI instrument, stretched out across the silicon touchpad.
  • Arts & culture
  • Electricals & electronics
  • Innovation Watch
  • Issue 77

A new way to make music

A team of engineers has developed a range of instruments that is changing the way people make music. ROLI combines digital technologies and pressure-sensitive silicone so that users can generate sounds with the lightest touch.

The wooden remains of the Mary Rose ship.
  • Arts & culture
  • Maritime & naval
  • Issue 74

Raising and conserving the Mary Rose

The Mary Rose Museum, shortlisted for the 2018 European Museum of the Year, houses the Mary Rose hull and thousands of Tudor artefacts that were sealed under clay and silt when it sank in 1545. Technology has helped detect, rescue, resurrect and conserve the remains of Henry VIII’s warship.

A crowd at Glastonbury festival watching the Arcadia Spider shoot out flames at night.
  • Arts & culture
  • Issue 72

From junk to spectacle

Synonymous with Glastonbury Festival, where it attracts thousands of partygoers each evening, the 15-metre-high Arcadia ‘Spider’ is an impressive, if unusual, example of engineering. Find out how the Spider was created.

A band performing in a studio.
  • Arts & culture
  • Issue 72

Music for the masses

Abbey Road Studios is one of the world’s most famous recording studios, linked with some of history’s greatest musicians and classic albums. Learn how the studios’ acoustic engineering expertise and classic equipment are being adapted to help today’s DIY musicians.

The production of The Tempest with special effects and actors on stage.
  • Arts & culture
  • Issue 71

The technology behind ‘The Tempest'

William Shakespeare’s The Tempest is a fantastical play that features illusion and otherworldly beings. Discover how cutting-edge technology, such as motion capture and sensors, has brought the magic and spectacle to life on stage.

The Stravos Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre.
  • Civil & structural
  • Arts & culture
  • Issue 70

Design-led innovation and sustainability

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, the new home of the Greek National Opera and the Greek National Library, boasts an innovative, slender canopy that is the largest and most highly engineered ferrocement structure in the world.

BB-8 on the red carpet for Star Wars the Force Awakens movie premiere.
  • Arts & culture
  • Technology & robotics
  • Issue 69

Engineering personality into robots

Robots that have personalities and interact with humans have long been the preserve of sci-fi films, although usually portrayed by actors in costumes or CGI. However, as the field of robotics develops, these robots are becoming real. Find out about the scene-stealing, real-life Star Wars droids.

A person sitting in an anechoic chamber.
  • Arts & culture
  • Electricals & electronics
  • Issue 62

How to maximise loudspeaker quality

Ingenia asked Dr Jack Oclee-Brown, Head of Acoustics at KEF Audio, to outline the considerations that audio engineers need to make when developing high-quality speakers.