Light art | elinesmits

Hello everyone!

I had to go to an experience for school. I chose GLOW Eindhoven because I have tried to go for two years and it never actually came out. A lot of people around me told me every year how nice it was so I got really curious.

So on Friday evening, I finally went to Eindhoven GLOW!

The experience
In this concept they put the center of Eindhoven in the sign of light-art for 8 days. The city center is transformed into a huge (temporary) museum.
Artists and designers from the Netherlands and abroad are showing their light art- and design applications, which have been realized by the use of new media technologies like computers, sensors, animation, but also more known projection techniques.

The entire route could be found over the internet or by using an information booklet. The route was also visible thanks to the street lamps which were colored red and there where traffic regulators who helped the great amount of people to cross the road.
There was a light show to see at the Philips Stadium, and a guard escorted me to the elevator because I was walking with a crutch. I thought the staff was very friendly!

Eindhoven is known as the City of Light, which originates in the launch of the Philips bulb factories in this city. Later, this resulted in many modern applications.

This year the theme of the festival is ‘Urban Playground’, in other words, a large playground for light-artists. Various light-artists showed in a unique way that by playing with light the reality can be experienced in a totally different way.

Psychosocial context
As you can read, I heard about GLOW regularly and had, therefore, already kind of a prior knowledge about it. I went with my mother and sister and thought it was important to have a nice evening and to discover what sorts of of different lighting techniques the artists used.

My expectations were pretty high. I heard about the Philips stadium already, that they putted cd’s on the seats which would gave a very nice effect. I was thereby focused to see these effects, they were a little bit disappointing but otherwise the light show was spectacular!
There were also involved several primary schools from Eindhoven.
As a visitor of the festival for example you could paint a specific surface of LEDS with water at the piece ‘Water light Graffiti’. When the LED lights get in touch with water, they will light out of nowhere.

With some work I had the idea that I could look at it for hours.

Experience
For me this was definitely a memorable experience. I learned a lot about light art and thought it was a well organized festival with very impressive work. It was very interesting to see how much you can do with light!
I will not forget this and I hope that I can go again the next few years!!

E.E Phase
Glow can be divided in Phase 4. Virtuality and involvement.
They use a lot of new technologies.

If you want more information about GLOW, go to these links:
http://www.gloweindhoven.nl/website/glow/glow.php?action=home