Lighting designer, electronic composer and multimedia artist Paul Alty creates immersive worlds where light and sound take centre stage. At the end of January (30, 31 Jan & 1 Feb), he returns with a bold new installation, MONUISM, transforming Old Christ Church into a monumental, ever-shifting landscape of light.
We caught up with Paul to find out all about MONUISM.
Paul, tell us a bit about yourself. Can you tell us more about your first memories of being fascinated by light and sound?
I’m a lighting designer and electronic composer and combining the two, a multimedia artist! As a lighting designer, I’ve worked in theatre, live music, TV, music videos and architectural work, so quite varied there and each genre and medium presents new ways of working. Theatre, however, is my spiritual home. As a musician, this followed much later and I got into it from being obsessed with sounds and noises but also how music evoked so many different emotional responses from me; so I thought, I’d give it a go and see if I can create music that I would want to listen to.
As a self-confessed space geek and someone whose had a mini-obsession with Salvador Dali, almost everything I do visually or musically will have some element of space or surrealism running through it. And where I think this is key is escapism. I’ve always escaped into light, sound, art (and space) and the work I create isn’t pinned onto a heavy narrative, there are no socio-political messages or meanings or lessons to be learned, these are multimedia creations that would have excited the ten-year old me. Panto is where I really seated in theatre and it is a key reference point here – panto is colour, sparkle, shapes, music and joy. Come in, forget about the world and ideally, leave a bit happier at the end.
You’ve been creating laser shows for a number of years now. How did you first get into working with lasers and light, and how has your practice evolved over time?
My lighting bug started at Crosby Civic Hall in the early 80’s. I’d go to a panto there and I’d be too busy looking at the lights and what was going on backstage. My friend’s dad was the lighting and sound guy there and he invited me in to ‘help’ with the lights for a panto. As a six-year old pressing buttons and seeing lights flash and change colour on the stage, well, it was the cherry on the cake. But even back then, I noticed there was emotion in lighting – in panto, for example, green was always used for the baddie, blue was always for something cold, followspots used to isolate actors singing heart-wrenching ballads and UV used to make dancing skeletons glow in the dark. Magical. As simple as all that is, it spoke to me.
I’ve been captivated by lasers for as long as I can remember; there’s just something magical about coherent laser light, pin-sharp beams and crisp, glowing colours! The historical problem with lasers was that they were huge and they had separate cooling units the size of a small car. I was fortunate to operate a few of these lasers in nightclubs and in architectural settings in the 90’s but far from scratching the itch, the itch to own my own only got worse!
I got my first laser in 1997 which was not much more than a laser pen’s worth of power and some small motors, but I had some serious fun with that! Imagine being a kid at Christmas and Santa brings about ten years worth of presents in one night – that’s what it felt like when I got it home! I eventually upgraded to computer-controller lasers which did the job on a few smaller shows, but compared to the setup now, is a world away.
Now, I’m running meticulously programmed shows that run to a timecode, perfectly sync’d to the soundtrack, and using lasers that can do 16 billion colours and beams powerful enough to write on clouds. What’s important here too, is how the health and safety of laser usage has kept up with technology. Shows now are so much safer with very clear guidelines as to what you can and can’t do.
MONUISM is a completely new light-art work for 2026. Where did the initial idea come from, and what sparked this exploration of monumentality and light?
Christopher Bauder. Christopher Bauder is a light artist based in Berlin and he, over the years, has created huge light and sound artworks, often with collaborators and his work is one of the inspirations behind MONUISM.
My previous show, Black Hole – End of Time, was huge, but in a very different way to how MONUISM is huge. Light is the star in MONUISM and I wanted to create a work where light is the artist and in MONUISM, that’s exactly what happens – light creates shapes, patterns and forms no different to a dancer – except these light dances are epic in scale.
What also fascinates me is the idea of memory where in a concert setting for example, light and sound fill a room. The room is electrified with emotion and vibrations, but then once everything is switched off, it’s just a room; but the memory lives on. I like this ephemeral nature of MONUISM where there huge, seemingly sold beams of light create huge geometric structures in the air and yet in the blink of an eye, they’re gone.
Old Christ Church lends itself so well to this sort of work as not only is it an enormous building, but the architecture adds so many new layers of interest. I think MONUISM makes you feel small; light is reaching out to places you could never touch.
The installation is constantly shifting in shape, scale, hue and intensity. How important is that sense of evolution and movement to the overall experience?
This is reflective of the soundtrack which itself shifts from slow, glacial soundscapes to upbeat, more dance vibes. I go back to the emotion word. MONUISM was designed to create a roller coaster of feeling and whilst some people will respond to the quieter and stiller moments, others will respond more to the more kinetic and upbeat sequences. It’s important that the show follows this emotional arc because otherwise, it’s just disco lights to music.
For someone walking into MONUISM for the first time, what do you hope they feel in those opening moments?
I’d love someone to walk in and think, ‘wow!’ Where I think MONUISM works so well is it’s scale, as this work really accentuates the scale of the church and you’re forced to look up – and I think in that moment, you appreciate the size and scale of the light and the building which in itself is amazing. What is fundamental to any of my work, be that light or sound, is emotion, and I always want people to feel something – whatever that ‘feel’ is. And referring back to the ten-year old me, that could be as simple as childhood excitement and wonder. And if I can excite and inspire kids as I was excited and inspired, then that’s job done in my eyes.
A portion of ticket sales will support Old Christ Church. Why is it important for you to connect large-scale light works like MONUISM with community spaces and causes?
This actually stemmed from covid. I had hired the church to run a few tests of what eventually became Black Hole – End of Time, and when the church trustees saw what I had been doing, they asked if I would perform something for the church trustees and members. It evolved into Black Hole – End of Time and paid for tickets. We ran that show for three consecutive years, each time getting bigger and raising more money to help support the church.
What Black Hole did was help bring people into the church and recognise its beauty from the inside. We had so many comments about people thinking the church was closed, some had no idea it existed at all and others then went off to hire it for other events, so that was a huge win in getting more people through the door. The work I do also makes you look at a venue a different way – how often do you see black holes and laser shows in a church?
The church trustees have been so welcoming to me (and trusting) and so if I can help support to keep it going as a community space, I in turn have the most amazing venue on my doorstep that allows me to explore weird and wonderful ideas…of which I have plenty more! Black Hole – End of Time was the start, MONUISM is definitely not the end.
MONUISM
Old Christ Church
30 January – 1 February 2026
Tickets
