VISITORS are set to enjoy an illuminating experience at the National Media Museum in Bradford city centre when its major new summer exhibition opens on Saturday.

Light Fantastic: Adventures in the Science of Light is a nod to 2015 being UNESCO's International Year of Light.

With help from Arts National Lottery funding from Arts Council England, the exhibition will run alongside a season of free family activities exploring the science of art and light.

The centrepiece is a specially commissioned light-art installation created by Manchester artist Liz West, 30, whose idea of creating a 10m by 5m room of mirrors containing hundreds of vibrant coloured lights won the museum's favour.

Curator of Film and Broadcast at the National Media Museum Claire Hampton said: "We put forward the idea and got lots of weird and wonderful ideas back, but Liz's just had that simple but wow factor we were looking for."

The dazzling combination of 250 six-foot long fluorescent coloured light tubes and mirrored walls immerses people in light and a space that seems to go on and on and on.

There are 191 individual colour filters fitted in An Additive Mix with 59 colours repeated just once. Ms West can name all of the different colours - her favourite is scuba blue.

It took more than three months to get the dead-set concept together and and three weeks to build the piece, which explores the scientific principle behind making white light by mixing colours that are visible with the human eye.

The exhibition, which will remain until November 1, also features ten key pieces from the Museum's collection of millions of objects connected to television, photography and cinematography.

On show is William Henry Fox-Talbot’s Camera Obscura from 1820, a three-strip Technicolor camera invented in 1932 to make colour feature films and a 360 degree Timeslice camera, made in 1993 and used on films including The Matrix. An X-ray image taken in 1896, just six months after the discovery of the invisible energy, is also displayed.

Deciding what to include in the show was a huge challenge said Mrs Hampton.

"This is our summer offering for everyone, specifically families but I'm hoping it will have cross-generational appeal," she said.

"Choosing what should go into the exhibition was a challenge. I had more than three million objects to choose from. The majority of objects in our collection create light or use it. I've had fun researching it all."

The three-strip Technicolor camera was an easy choice though, because it was used to make The Wizard of Oz, a movie loved by artist Ms West and inspirational in her work.

"Our brief to Liz was loose. We chose light and wanted to see how our collection inspired her. She chose colour and we loved the sound of her installation and had faith in it so we said, 'good luck and here's your space'.

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"We've not been disappointed. It's just incredible. It has a different effect on everyone who sees it. Some people find it calming others are lifted by it - it's a very emotional experience."

Ms West said she did not want to prescribe how anyone should feel on entering the room, but would be fascinated to find out, guaranteeing a physical, sensory and psychological experience.

"I'm not the kind of artist who creates something that people have to push a button to see. I wanted it to be all-engaging and to ignite people's senses. It's completely immerses people. It's the biggest installation I've done so far," she said.

Today, pupils from Beckfoot School in Bingley had a sneaky preview of the exhibition before Saturday's official unveiling.

Brooke Firth, 11, said: "When I walked in, I didn't know if I could keep on walking or not because of the mirrors. It looked as though I could but I wasn't sure. It looked as though you could keep walking forever. It's an illusion."

Ben Richardson, 14, said; "From walking into it from the dark and into the light it made me feel a bit dizzy, but I liked being in it."

Alex Farquhar, also 14, added: "I felt it was so colourful. It made me feel happy and positive."

This weekend free activities are on offer for families, as well as the first opportunity to see the work of artists-in-residence Martha Jurksaitis and Christian Hardy. They have created Double Exposure: A Tale of Two Planets in Darkness and Light, which includes using a working darkroom.

Double Exposure explores two very different planets - one completely without light and another with too much - and investigates how science helps create films and photography in those extreme conditions.

Visitors can also create their own camera-less photographs, participate in light experiments, getting hands-on with invisibility cloaks and lasers that project onto clouds.