As I look to the spring, I'm ready to dive into FINDING THE SKY. A number of personal issues impeded my art-making endeavors but I've decided to turn my back on them and forge forward with my installation.
My last entry was made before the nation was turned upside down by our electing a complete moron to lead us for the next four years. I take responsibility simply because I'm an American. My fellow citizens went to the polls and made sure that the Man in the Chair would get rid of anything non-white; at least push them over the border or to the back burner.
Enough. Four, maybe eight years of who knows what. I'm tired of hearing it/thinking about it.
I was looking at the various light art festivals around the world: Glow in the Netherlands, InLight in Richmond VA, Lux in Helsinki, Festival of Lights in Berlin among many, many others. With the event of light-weight and energy efficient LED units, night festivals with zillions of lights are popping up like mushrooms.
I list the four above because, after carefully combing through a good 20 of them, I sat back and cataloged what I was seeing. All the festivals above include free-standing, flat projected and 3D mapped light sculpture shows--some animated--in which images are perfectly patterned and projected onto huge government buildings. The ones above (and I haven't visited any of them yet) showed works that appear to apprise the environment in which they are in addition to offering consideration for the medium and the message it carries.
The greater majority, sadly, fall short here. The beauty is in the envisioning and innovation of truly spectacular art pieces; they're fully immersive and interactive with the audience but appear (on my computer screen in my warm, cozy apartment) vapid on emotion and correlation.
Sensational work is to be expected when test-driving new technologies. Exploration is supposed to be a touch naive if it's to be the slightest bit charming. My issue is that most of the pieces lack two critical qualities: an artistic message--why did I do this? what am I saying (or trying to say?) AND why do I need a light sculpture the size of the Sydney Opera House to say it?
In other words, is what's being expressed related--in any way--to light, time, space, color, buildings and architecture, night time, public theatre or is this just another groovy gizmo for the tourists to bring "income to the municipality"?
The most impressive--even if a little over the top--is the 3D animated mapping at Spotlight--Bucharest International Light Festival. The video is five minutes long.
More on this in the very near future.
My last entry was made before the nation was turned upside down by our electing a complete moron to lead us for the next four years. I take responsibility simply because I'm an American. My fellow citizens went to the polls and made sure that the Man in the Chair would get rid of anything non-white; at least push them over the border or to the back burner.
Enough. Four, maybe eight years of who knows what. I'm tired of hearing it/thinking about it.
I was looking at the various light art festivals around the world: Glow in the Netherlands, InLight in Richmond VA, Lux in Helsinki, Festival of Lights in Berlin among many, many others. With the event of light-weight and energy efficient LED units, night festivals with zillions of lights are popping up like mushrooms.
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| An image from the 2016 Festival of Light in Berlin. Finding information about this truly engaging piece is difficult. More information is forthcoming. |
The greater majority, sadly, fall short here. The beauty is in the envisioning and innovation of truly spectacular art pieces; they're fully immersive and interactive with the audience but appear (on my computer screen in my warm, cozy apartment) vapid on emotion and correlation.
Sensational work is to be expected when test-driving new technologies. Exploration is supposed to be a touch naive if it's to be the slightest bit charming. My issue is that most of the pieces lack two critical qualities: an artistic message--why did I do this? what am I saying (or trying to say?) AND why do I need a light sculpture the size of the Sydney Opera House to say it?
In other words, is what's being expressed related--in any way--to light, time, space, color, buildings and architecture, night time, public theatre or is this just another groovy gizmo for the tourists to bring "income to the municipality"?
The most impressive--even if a little over the top--is the 3D animated mapping at Spotlight--Bucharest International Light Festival. The video is five minutes long.
More on this in the very near future.
