In 2018, Sysco engineered a 180m² suspended LED ceiling at Fen Court, designed to turn a central London passageway into an everyday cultural experience. Over the years, Sysco provided regular maintenance and produced seasonal media that shaped the installation into a recognisable public landmark. In 2025, it was relaunched under a new identity, Skyframe London, with its first major activation, Skyframe Piano, which invited passers-by to generate real-time skyscapes through music. The popularity of this activation laid the groundwork for wider public participation.
The Skyframe Awards were created to give emerging artists the opportunity to design for one of London’s largest suspended digital canvases. Developed with UK universities, the programme offered students and recent graduates practical industry experience, supported by Sysco through workshops, simulator sessions and on-site development time. Translating work from a desktop display to a 9.5-metre-high panoramic ceiling introduced new considerations around scale, brightness, movement and colour, giving artists valuable insight into the demands of public-facing immersive media.
For the inaugural edition, artists were invited to respond to the theme Digital Detox.
James Doherty (UCA) explored atmospheric world-building through animation, imagining a floating brutalist structure emerging from fog.
Livvy Seabrook-Wilkins (UCA) brought a hand-crafted sensibility to the canvas through analogue mark-making and oil-on-glass textures.
Philip Hoare (UCL) created a reflective piece centred on navigating London with assistive technology.
Oliver Pearse (UCA) produced an abstract marine-inspired environment using hand-crafted textures. DNA Studio, Dor Frenkel and Amit Segall (Goldsmiths alumni), developed a spatial work that softened digital noise into a calming overhead environment. Together, the artists approached the brief with contrasting visual languages, demonstrating the range of personal responses the theme could evoke when expressed through large-scale immersive media. Their work highlighted how varied and introspective the idea of digital detox becomes when translated into motion, texture and colour on a public canvas.
The five completed pieces premiered at Skyframe London to an audience of partners, practitioners and members of the creative community. A panel representing design, architecture and digital arts selected James Doherty as the inaugural winner. Following the event, all works ran publicly for two months, allowing thousands of passers-by to encounter and revisit the pieces as part of their daily journeys. The connection formed between artists, audiences and the surrounding city affirmed Skyframe’s ambition as a platform for shared cultural experience.
The response to the Skyframe Awards has set the foundation for future editions and contributed to the development of the Skyframe Academy, a forthcoming initiative offering longer-form workshops, technical training and extended collaboration with universities. As Skyframe London continues to evolve, the focus remains on supporting emerging talent, encouraging experimentation and providing an accessible public space where creativity unfolds overhead.
