Merging the realm of kinetic light sculpture and performance, creating ephemeral light forms floating in the air: entertainment show, ceremony, or should they just be called light instruments?
For 3 nights, each year, lots of people come to walk the city of Caiscais, next to Lisbon, and see the lights of the Lumina festival. There’s a good reason to enjoy some time with friends, see videos and colourful lights, talk, have a snack, have a drink, comment, applause, dislike, enjoy and, above all, see the town in a different light.
The Interactive Digital Mandala
Storybox coming from Wellington, New Zealand, created an online interactive video-mapping: you enter a word and the projection changes. Connected to the internet, the #entity255 googles images related to your word – sun, stairs, aesthetics, Sporting Clube de Portugal, performance, sailing, ocean and so on – and inserts them into the kaleidoscopic pattern that constantly changes.
Our digital version of the ancient mandala symbol is data and user generated, Storybox say. Once #entity255 is up and running, its changing shapes and responses to human interaction are all addressed by code. It draws visual material from the vast universe of the internet via google image searches inputted by the public.
#entity255 explores the notion of the mandala as a spiritual teaching tool, a way of establishing a sacred space and as an aid to meditation and trance induction. The work references the common generic notion of the mandala as a representation or microcosm of the universe – in this case, the digital universe.
N by Fuse*
Choreography & real time coding, that’s the specialty of fuse* studio. Briefly, the story of N goes like this: N is a sound-reactive generating installation. The first version, N 1.0, was presented for the first time at the NODE festival in Modena, Italy, in 2010, when the projected net was modified in real time by the live sets playing inside the buildings. Among the artists who have interacted with the installation there are Ryoji Ikeda and Ryoichi Kurokawa.
The N 4.0 version is an interactive multimedia performance based on the real-time interaction between sound, movement and light. The perspective of the visuals alter on the basis of where the performance takes place.
The graphics are modified simultaneously on the basis of sound frequencies and the instantaneous analysis of the dancer’s movements. N won the award of Digital Graffiti 2011 – Most Innovative Visual Installation.
Aurora Australis
A tale of traditional indigenous stories, this Open your Eyes 360º video-mapping project was created with the participation of Pitcha Makin Fellas, a group of Australian Aboriginal artists.
These community members meet regularly to talk and then paint on the canvas the stories that were told. This process, developed in a visually rich universe, has been conducted in a workshop where Ocubo, along the Pitcha Makin, shared visions and creations and transformed the words into animated pictures of the 4 seasons. Just to give you an idea of the atmosphere of the Open Your Eyes mapping, here is a glimpse from the Melbourne show:
The Giant Dandelions
The dandelions are the work of Olivia d’Aboville. 90 huge flowers of more than 2 meters tall are made from about 9,000 recycled Hope in a Bottle water bottles cut and connected to one another by a nylon weave. Each flower is lit by an energy efficient bulb in order to create intensity variations within the forest. It is the second time Olivia is partnering Hope in a Bottle, a Filipino brand of water bottle which gives proceeds from their sales to building new public schools around the Philippines. The exaggerated scale of the Dandelions through the presentation of this installation creates an interesting landscape of light, and through the creative re-using of the discarded plastic bottles, it sends out a bigger message of inspiration and hope to the less-privileged.
Running in Circles, Dancing in Waves
Running in Circles, Dancing in Waves by Paul Friedlander and Zoot was a show presented in the round with an ancient fountain taking centre stage by an accident of location, the quiet central still point around which the whirling movement shall play out.
Sometimes spinning, sometimes moving in waves, the show grew from small beginnings until the light display dwarfs the performers barely noticeable all dressed in black below the elusive luminous patterns.
Travel in Patterns 
2 thoughts on “Cascais. Lumina”