Rhymes with WOW

GLOW Eindhoven is one of the biggest light art festivals in Europe, reaching its 15th edition i 2021. There was something old, something new, something recycled and something cold flickering blue.

Lights! Colour! Prepare to be amazed!
Water Wall by Aquatique Shows

Decentralized light art in a city with electrical history

The city as a venue does mean a lot to the overall ambience of the festival and so does the route. Eindhoven does have a place in history of lighting, since it’s The Philips City and you should visit the museum. But it is not the prettiest city of the Netherlands. The route did, however, show different and quite interesting areas of Eindhoven. This year, the artworks were scattered all around the city, in three main clusters with a couple satellites added. I had three nights to spend, and I do say it was not too much – even though I skipped most of the satellites. There was some extra walking (and, occasionally, fence hopping... a friend told me), since the map didn’t show which areas were fenced and where to get in. There is some room for improvement there.

The bold buildings of the city were used well as material for artworks. My absolute favourite was Eye of Atlas by a team led by Philip Ross and Max Frimout. The existing lighting system of the Atlas office building was programmed for light to breathe, linger and slide in the building, with an immaculate sense of rhythm. The Rainbow (a tad obvious name, I'd say) by Rik Verschuren and Tim van Stiphout was a beautiful display of colours, but a less daring bet in the inhouse light game. In this case the colour scheme was an argued decision, not just running through the whole colour spectre because you can, I'm happy to say.

A chord in the Eye of Atlas symphony

A colour variation of Rainbow

Laser tag war with a church

As with pretty much every festival, GLOW had a large façade projection mapping show. The canvas was a church, a very popular choice in projection mapping. Domus Luma by Yann Nguema had quite an organic flow in the animations, which made a big difference compared to the usual engineery punctuality of most projection mappings. Even though there was fair share of flying bricks and crumbling walls, there also was some unusual stuff, like lasers combined to projection. It’s much more fun to see a church falling apart, when it’s done with lasers! Another trend I’ve noticed in projection mappings: a human-ish character appearing for no apparent reason. Here it was a shiny hunk with a huge banana on his shoulders. 

That must be one heavy banana.

Topical lanterns

Self made lanterns forming a collective artwork have, indeed, become quite inevitable in light art festivals. I feel really at home here, since I curated the Lantern Park of Lux Helsinki festival for six years. So, guilty as charged. Of course, Lux Lanterns is the bestest of best lantern collection, but it is nice to see other people doing just as crazy stuff elsewhere. In Eindhoven, however, I was getting desperate not to find any lanterns at all, but finally found some – in a bar! How suitable, since the lanterns have been made by students. Points to Eindhoven for placement and a supportive theme!

The New Mutants lantern project was led by Har Hollands

From big and bold to blunt and blue

I remember seeing my first colourfully lighted town square in Pécs’s Zolnay light festival some years ago and I remember thinking wow this is something different. I was wrong, of course. Many festivals have their own version of this theme, and I cannot complain, it is very nice indeed. In Eindhoven the square was huge and there was a building to go with it and there was a colourfully lighted industrial space as well! Overwhelming!

Footprint at Ketelhuisplein was a project led by Hugo Vrijdag, with kids of Eindhoven, who drew the images seen covering the area. The artwork is a comment on the Dutch ecological footprint, and I'm sure the electricity needed for the piece is produced by windmills. In a weird way, Footprint managed to be cheerful and dystopian at the same time. It must be the combination of flowers and eerie green light.

Ode to Light (oh, come on, have some imagination with the names!) by Daniel Margraf was more evidently merry. Bright colours, fairytale characters and tropical birds transformed the industrial space into an enormous eye candy store. What a stark contrast was the next artwork, Falsche Frage by Charles Vreuls! With its blunt blue-white warning lights flickering almost violently in silence, it certainly was not pretty. But it was impressive. 

A green Footprint

Industrial hall in bloom

These lights would probably scare the moths away

Christmas is coming

The line between decorational lights and light art is blurred, especially at light festivals, especially before Christmas. Valerio Festi's Porte Celesti, with 25 light gates around the city are very much based on the baroque aesthetics of abundance and ornamental. I would rather call them decoration, with a strong skill in craft. Mind you, decoration is not a bad thing, when done properly. Here it most certainly is.

A good example of meticulous craftmanship

Different kinds of site-specifity

The Window Expo was a great idea to involve local organisations and businesses, I think. Since the artworks were often quite small, it became a kind of treasure hunt to spot them in the shops' windows. The artistic level was varied, yes, and often the artworks didn't quite stand out from the usual window display, but that was maybe not the main point here. Muziekgebouw's Hahaha (by Marijn Smits, Laurie Roijackers, Isis Boot, Luuk Thijssen and Mandy Ouderland) was one of the tops of this entity, I think. 

Gijs van Bon's Ping is a product of GLOW Eindhoven 2018, now renewed and replaced to the worksite of Nanjing Pavilion. Whether the worksite of the venue is genuine or specially staged for Ping, it matches very nicely with its board constructions and makes the artwork even more site-specific than originally. The artwork first hit me like what the hell is this raving hodgepodge? But while wondering that, I grew quite liking the invisible high speed roller coaster, roaming around fiercely, hitting the wall like flaming Harry Potter, very late from the Hogwarts train. 

Smiles of Endhovians in Hahaha

Light hitting the wall in Ping 

Moving strictly and broadly at the same time

All in all, the festival was pretty much what I expected and what light art festival usually are: things of beauty, joy and amazement. The search for WOW effect was evident: most of the adjectives in media material were likes of stunning, incredibly impressive, huge scale, gigantic, beautiful effects and images, wonderfully enchanting and so on. You get the picture. 

The slogan for the year was "Moved by light". Yes, there were some artworks that encouraged actual moving, and yes, light moves us also on emotional level – but that goes with all light, not just the artworks in GLOW. This is an issue with themes: if you have a specific one, it might prove difficult to stick to it and if you don't, the exhibition may end up amoeba-like mishmash. Not that anyone cares, except some deranged curators maybe. Often, I think, the themes are picked just because you have to have one, without really thinking about the content. 

But this is material for another article entirely.

People moving vigorously

Other people visiting Glow Eindhoven

Burtlife

Tripadvera (in Dutch)

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Unbelievably big thanks to Niilo Helander Foundation, that has made my Grand Tour of Light Art, including the visit to Eindhoven, possible.

Drop the Light Art!

Projio in Tampere is an interesting media art festival, that would do just fine without the light art appendix.

I loved the compactness of the Projio festival 2021. Just one building and six artists! Well, the VJ competition made a bunch more, but still. It was so much easier to concentrate to the art works with no pressure of seeing five hundred more, or walk miles to get to those five hundred more artworks. I also appreciate the curating of the festival: most of the art works had something quite meditational in common, but they were in no way too similar with each other.

Having time for concentrating was especially important with Yu Hsuan Yao’s Séance, with its intensifying dramaturgic arch and visual finesse. Projected on multi-layer gauzes and screens, the piece depicts a Taoist ritual in 360°. It’s not documentary, though, but gives a somewhat trancelike, even part-taking feeling when watched long enough. At least it did for me.

Ghosts or people? Doesn't really matter in Séance
Photo: Katja Muttilainen

Folding abundance of Visual Meditation

Patterns dissolving in Dissolving Patterns

Teemu Raudaskoski also used gauze in his Visual Meditation, but more for softening the image than layering it, I reckon. The gauze also emphasized the abundance of visual material, consisting of recognizable forest imagery, shattered, distorted and then recomposed. The overwhelming amount of material could be observed as separate details, but I enjoyed the general composition, which made me think of fruit and flower stilllebens of the 18th century. Except, of course, that the leben here was not still at all.

I was impressed by the near-abstraction and genial site-specifity of Janne Ahola’s Levottomuus (Restlessness) in FLASH Vallisaari exhibition some years ago. Projio's Dissolving Patterns, projected on the façade, was more of a flying bricks and twisting towers kind of traditional projection mapping piece. I know, everyone and their cousin love this awe inspiring style, but I for one sure hope to see mr. Ahola’s further forays into realms of non-geometric subtlety. 

Suvi Parrilla’s Kemiallinen kirkastus was subtle all right, even to the point of non-visibility. I’d like to think that was intentional, since the theme of the piece is disappearing of fish, caused by chemical clarification in lake Mikkolanlammi. Non-striking doesn’t mean non-interesting, I should add. White contours of the fish, floating gracefully around the façade, with added colour splash every now and then, were visually and thematically very thought of. 

Barely visible fish in Parrilla's artwork

Soft glow and crispy lines in Teemu Määttänen's Fold

If I'd do anything as tidy as Määttänen ever, I would show it to the world, too
Photo: Katja Muttilainen

Antti Pussinen's glowing globe

White lines were in an even more important role in Teemu Määttänen’s Folded. According to the name, the canvas was made of meticulously folded pieces of cardboard, where the projected white lines flowed across the ridges. This beautiful study of light and form is a close relative to a previous artwork of mr. Määttänen, Atlas Tree, where similar lines stroked a trunk of a tree. Then again, I don’t recall that many artworks by Määttänen, where white lines did not play a part. Not that I’m complaining, white crispy lines are one of the things that make life worth living!

I have previously seen Antti Pussinen’n Nth wave in the Oksasenkatu 11 gallery in Helsinki, where it floated in its own solitude in the gallery, behind the window, quite ominously. Here the display was quite different, but the somber beauty was still there. 

I’m not too familiar with video jockey culture, but I do find the accompanying VJ competition, organized in cooperation with Tampere Film Festival, to be a great idea and an example of good synergy. The huge wall of the Vooninki building made a good canvas for the projected art works, with its light surface and distinctive details. The videos were not the projection mapping kind I expected (and feared), but more like short, somewhat dreamlike movies. Every artwork had the same music, which I understood was a starting point for the artists. I have to say, though, that I didn’t sense a super galactic mind-blowing connection between the videos and the music, and I even dare to wonder why this particular, quite ambient music was chosen.

VJ Vixen's Primitives was my favourite for simplicity,
60's style bold colours and considering the façade's details

Projio is advertised as media and light art festival, but the light part was all but nonexistent. Yes, there was some light stuff around Vooninki building, but the name of the artist was not easy to find. Actually, I can’t even say if I did. So, light art clearly wasn’t the focus here. Also, light art is part of media arts, so no need to mention it separately. Also too, nice area lighting doesn't have to be called light art. Also three, I think the video art was quite enough, and there are about gazillion light art festivals already anyway. I don’t say this often, but forget about light art, you’ll do just fine without!

I wouldn't call it art, but the lighting around Vooninki was nice.
Photo: Katja Muttilainen

Bonus Track

My guide this evening was Katja Muttilainen, who knows Tampere, light and especially light in Tampere well. Some of the photos of this posting are by her, since she has a less shitty camera and more talent than me. In addition to Projio, we visited a brand new tram stop light art work by Jaakko Himanen and checked the lighting of Tammerkoski rapids by WhiteNight Lighting. Both were super. We also had a hearty dinner at Tuulensuu gastro pub, where Katja explained my erratic behaviour to the waiter: "She's from Helsinki". You know, there's this friendly-ish competition between the cities of Tampere, Helsinki and Turku, and we like to mock each other when ever the opportunity arises. Mocking me for being from Helsinki was totally okay, of course, since it was a punch up.

The weather was inhumane, but wet ground sure served Jaakko Himanen's art work well

Aaltoja! Light and Sound in Kotka: A Good Start with Bold Colours

Kotka has joined the cities with a very own light and sound festival, Aaltoja! (Waves! In English) 13.–16.10.2021. There was some sound all right, but the main attraction certainly was light. I visited the festival during its final day and found it to be a solid start for hopefully long run in the future.

So, what is special about Aaltoja! Festival?

Fish of the Fairy land

Professionality

Let’s start with organising, which was quite professional. The look of the whole thing, including web pages, was refreshing and inviting. And pink. Which automatically makes it good. There were food trucks with actual food in them, for quite many tastes. Lots of people, but not too much rush. 

Lighting and light art are not quite the same thing, which is not all too clear even for professionals. Neither is better than the other, they just are two different things (with a load of grey area between them, I admit). I was quite impressed that the website listed “light and sound artworks and lighted venues”. And. Love that word there. Very adept.

Just one exception: I would have liked to know the names of the artists and designers, in addition to the firms they work for.

Scale

The scale was perfect. There were plenty of artworks, but not too many, and they were in a reasonable walking area. The route was free but logical and easy to follow. For most. One got to walk enough, but one also had time to visit all the venues even if one got lost, proceeded incoherently and had a few pit stops by the food trucks. 

Locality

Sure, there were some pieces that have been displayed elsewhere, but mainly the festival brought out local buildings via their spirit and not just as canvases – and to some extent, local artists and designers. The theatre house is a good example. The light design was quite traditional, but adding local ingredients, like clips from performance recordings and chairs used in plays, made a great difference.

Theatre is chaired by the audience

Also, one of my favourite pieces, Niko Tiainen’s BINARY:WAVES was not just transported from its previous venue but rethought for Kotkansaari old hospital building. The black and white waves washed the walls soothingly, while ones and zeros disappeared and reappeared under them, contrasting nature and strict digits. In my interpretation, anyhow.

Binary writing on the wall

The Kotka county hall is one of the most boring buildings I’ve ever not even noticed, but by golly, it is a great canvas for light. Sun Effects’s nominal Aaltoja! (Waves) introduced the theme quite literally, with different kind of waves, including sound and heartbeat graphs, backed by a water like churn of colours. Simple and beautiful. 

Waves of another kind

The rest of the buildings were lighted with bold and striking colors, the most vivid example being the Haukkavuori lookout. Kotka church was lighted to emphasize the redness of the brick walls, with contrasting tones in the windows. The chosen colour kind of made the church look even more phallic than it already is, with the white splash on the tip not helping. Or maybe it’s just me. 

Probably. 

The tower

So, the colours were abundant, but I didn’t catch even one sample guilty of my pet peeve: running colours through the whole spectrum, just because it’s possible. 

There is progress, after all! 

Local contribution to the festival