Lumiere London 2018

My favourite installation at Lumiere London 2018. Waterlicht was a mixture of overhead laser projectors over a mist-filled Granary Square. It was like walking underneath the surface of the sea although this photos doesn’t show the scene very clearly.

Another, less stylized, image of Waterlicht. Human silhouettes are visible underneath the waves of blue giving a slightly clearer picture of this installation.

It was a little disappointing that we weren’t able to walk amongst the balloons of this installation, called Child Hood. It would have provided opportunities for much better pictures but the health and safety problems would be hard to overcome. If I remember correctly these ballons would rise and sink, whilst fluctuating in brightness, to the sound of an ominous atmospheric music reminiscient of Hans Zimmer’s darker musical scores. Every so often, such as when this photo was taken, all the balloons would light up in time with a peak of intensity in the audio.

This was impressive in it’s simplicity. A lot of the installations for Lumiere London were either unimpressive, lacking in both effort and creativity, or were permanent features of London simply folded into the festival’s programming. Sometimes they were both. Harmonic Portal was no more than rings of LED’s hung on a brick wall. The effect of something of such little effort (although not necessarily little creativity) was fantastic.