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?
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
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| Local contribution to the festival |
