In the Studio

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the Palme d’Or award-winning Thai filmmaker and artist, is back at the Cannes Film Festival this year with his film, Memoria, which has just been selected for the main competition. Starring Tilda Swinton, Memoria is Apichatpong’s first feature film to be shot outside his native Thailand. Apart from being shot in the mountains of Colombia and centering on a widow, played by Swinton, who goes in search of her own identity after hearing a series of mysterious bangs, many details of the film have been kept under wraps. With exclusive access to the Director, cast and crew, In the Studio joins Apichatpong on the shoot in Colombia and follows him through to the post-production in Thailand.

Emma Kathleen Thomas was confronted with the fragility of life at a young age. The British-Mexican artist lost both of her parents early, and this painful experience has made her passionate about preserving the rich variety of life on earth, protecting the planet for her young children and - she hopes - instilling in them the confidence to bring children into the world themselves one day. To mark International Day for Biological Diversity 2021, Emma has been planning an ambitious collaborative artwork: a tapestry of large-scale images of endangered species, laid out in different-coloured clothes and visible from the air, which will unfold in real time across the planet’s surface. The project will involve participants from countries including Australia, Ghana, the UK and the US, who will create images as diverse as the white-necked picathartes, a bird living in Africa for 44 million years and now critically endangered, and the golden paintbrush, a prairie flower that is disappearing due to the loss of its habitat. Each image will be completed at exactly 17:00 local time, creating a 'Mexican wave’ of endangered species around the globe, with audiences worldwide following online. Danish visual artist Eske Kath joins Emma in Copenhagen as she oversees the Danish leg of the project - a huge image featuring the great yellow bumblebee, laid out in a sports ground in the Danish capital - and finds out how some of the other participating groups have fared.

When the world’s first A.I. “robot artist” was announced in 2019, In the Studio was given exclusive access to the design and making of Ai-Da, a humanoid robot capable of drawing people from real life, and named after Ada Lovelace, the first female computer programmer in the world. As an exhibit of Ai-Da’s artwork is shown at the UK’s Design Museum, and she takes up her first artist residency, we hear how the team used A.I. processes and algorithms, cameras in her eyes and a pen in her robotic hand, to allow Ai-Da to draw from sight. Karl Bos talks to the creative visionary behind the project, Gallery Director Aidan Meller, along with the young engineers tasked with making her drawing arm and the team producing her head, face and body.

As you enter Lungelo Gumede’s studio, in the heart of South Africa's coastal city of Durban, you are greeted by the smell of paint, clay and other materials. Across the room, what you see is surprising. At first glance, you are looking at Nelson Mandela, the recently departed King of the Zulu Nation, Goodwill Zwelithini and Queen Elizabeth II. As you get closer, of course, you discover they are wax figures elegantly dressed in real clothes. That's what Lungelo specialises in - life size statues of prominent global figures in politics, sports and entertainment, with a special focus on African heroes. His art is celebrated across South Africa and, at only 36, he’s on a mission to create the country’s first ever wax museum. Mpho Lakaje spends a week with Lungelo to discover what it takes to make a new wax figure.

Motoring journalist Erin Baker gets behind the wheel of Porsche's latest 911 sports car. Michael Mauer, current chief designer at Porsche, and Tony Hatter, design manager on models including the 993, describe to Erin what it takes to design a car that will be both instantly recognisable and desirable. From the initial sketch to full-scale models and the final product, Erin gets under the bonnet of the design process. Porsche is also the largest high performance vehicle manufacturer in the world. Erin asks what the future holds for Porsche design, and driving for pleasure, beyond the internal combustion engine.

Scottish guitar maker Jimmy Moon receives an order to make a custom-built acoustic guitar from musician Midge Ure, as the craft of handmade musical instrument making is put in the spotlight in this edition of In the Studio. We follow the process from Midge’s initial specifications of size and finish, to the picking of wood, joinery, engineering work and finishing by Jimmy and his assistant Stephen Devine, to final delivery to Midge.

Midge needs a new acoustic to use on stage for a series of shows where he’s stripping back his solo hits and those as front man with electronic 80s band Ultravox to perform them with just an acoustic guitar. Jimmy has eight weeks before Midge returns to Glasgow, and we follow this master instrument maker as he creates the guitar that will accompany Midge’s catalogue of classic tunes including If I Was, Vienna, Dancing with Tears in My Eyes and the Band Aid classic Do They Know It’s Christmas.

Along the way, Midge talks to guitarist supremo Martin Taylor about the different requirements for him as a jazz guitarist compared to Midge’s rock style. Midge throws up a challenge requesting an all-black matt finish, a first for Jimmy’s order book, so he has to juggle design as well as creating musical tonal perfection.

A derelict lighthouse…an island only accessible by boat …and the rhythm and sound of water…..all these are crucial components in the latest artwork being unveiled this June by the Spanish installation artist and sculptor Cristina Iglesias. She’s won international acclaim for her work transforming public spaces and her latest project takes this further by remaking the lighthouse as a sculptural site. The lighthouse is on St Clara Island, in the area of San Sebastian, Spain, where Cristina was born. She’s transforming the interior of the building and adding water to recreate the impression of waves. It’s a process that is full of complications with complex engineering and structural logistics.

Reporter Kristina Zorita travels with Cristina by boat to the island for a day to find out how she and a team of specialists work on creating the wave effects. Will the timings of the water sequences work as Cristina has imagined? We also hear about the significance of the lighthouse and the island in Cristina’s artistic imagination and the life of the community.

As Covid-19 has swept the world we’ve become used to seeing musicians in lockdown presenting videos of virtual performances. But for the Grammy-award winning American composer and conductor Eric Whitacre, the idea of a virtual choir is nothing new because he pioneered the concept over 10 years ago. His first choir of 185 singers became a global phenomenon and has been seen by millions on YouTube. More virtual choir projects followed and the choir videos have featured as installations and as part of the 2012 Olympics and the Davos World Economic Forum. Now Eric’s just released his largest Virtual Choir project to date, which premiered on YouTube a few days ago. It features 17,572 singers from around the world performing his new piece “Sing Gently” for which he’s written the words and the music.

Eric talks to Emma Kingsley about creating this latest project, the inspirations for his other compositions, the idea of the musical “golden brick” and how his early dreams of becoming a pop star changed through singing Mozart in the college choir.

The designer Ini Archibong has won global recognition for his work with Hermès and Sé and his pieces have been exhibited in galleries across Europe and the USA. He’s known for his designs of luxury items but recently he’s been working on something very different – a partnership with the American design firm Knoll, renowned for its workplace furniture - where Ini has been designing a stackable chair and a table to be used in cafeterias.

Working closely with Ini to make his designs a reality is Knoll’s Executive Vice President of Design, Benjamin Pardo. We follow the discussions between him and Ini over months as they work through the intricacies of making the chair safe and stackable. The programme begins in 2019 when Imogen Foulkes meets Ini at his home in Switzerland and sees how his designs are beginning to take shape. There will be 2 versions of the chair- one with arms and one without. But can what’s in Ini’s head be adapted to the manufacturing processes and the demands of making something like this for a mass market?

As the pandemic takes hold, the process has to be paused – but soon it resumes and, finally, Ini can take delivery of a completed chair ahead of its planned unveiling in the Pavilion of the African Diaspora that he’s designed for the London Design Biennale in June 2021.

U.Me: The Musical is a new musical for radio and podcast that premieres on Wednesday 12 May. How – in a period of global pandemic – do you take the idea of creating a radio musical that aims to bring joy and catharsis to a locked down world, and turn that into a reality? This programme examines the huge team effort that goes into crafting a piece of audio art for our times. At the centre of the story are BBC story commissioner and co-writer Simon Pitts, composer and lyricist Theo Jamieson (musical supervisor of West End hit Everybody’s Talking About Jamie), plus Grammy Award-winning record producer Steve Levine. The trio are at the heart of a large cast of artistic talents, all of whom contribute to the final work. Via a combination of video calls, exclusive access to the fully Covid-19 compliant bubble of London rehearsal rooms, actual production recordings featuring the socially distanced BBC Philharmonic, and contributions from show leads Anoushka Lucas and Martin Sarreal, actor and writer Mathew Horne (Gavin Shipman in BAFTA-winning BBC TV series Gavin and Stacey) examines the creative process behind this unique radio production.