Incandescent Illunimate

On Friday night, myself & DZ attended the Hull leg of the Illuminate – Light Night event.

“Hull Art Lab presents Incandescent: a month of events exploring the spectacle of illumination, which includes: artists from the UK and Europe, exhibiting and performing specially commissioned work; a film programme spanning over 100 years of cinema; and a symposium discussing time, light and the visible; the presentation of light as both material and illusion to stimulate our senses and challenge our intellect.” Hull Art Lab

We started off, by visiting the “Day In, Day Out” installation outside Hull Central Library. We arrived slightly too early, and due to the natural light during dusk we wasn’t able to clearly see the projected image on the pavement and decided to return later.

On our way to the main event area, in the distance we could hear a heavy ethnic sounding beat. As we approached we encountered a parade of people & children circling around holding aloft home made lanterns of various designs, lead by a Chinese dragon.

Next we headed off into Queen Victoria Square to see an animation being projected onto the front of Ferens Art Gallery. The animation was of stick people, which wasn’t that impressive . Despite the huge projection I noticed how oblivious other people were of the projection. One image that certainly stood out occurred as a man walked by pushing a child in a pram, to the left of him was a image of a stick figure holding a hand gun and it was pointing towards them! This was soooo surreal, I just wish I had a camera.

From, “Vicky Sq2″ we headed down to the Blue Bell pub to have a quick pint of Sam Smiths Stout ordered from the landlord who DZ has nicknamed “The Red Baron” (INTP humour LOL).

Having had a slight pick-me-up pint, our next leg of our “Light Night” journey took us to The Deep @ the mouth of the river Hull. Half way across the footbridge we stopped and peered over the side to experience the pulsating wind hitting our faces which quite literally was taking our breaths away. In the distance down the side of the river bank saw an artist dressed in a electro-glowing multicoloured suit which was very reminicant of deep sea bioluminescence creature – quite apt considering the location . We wasn’t able to get a close up view of said suit as the concourse was blocked off to public access.

We back tracked and went to see an exhibit underneath Garrison Road bridge, which consisted of a series of green glowing lines on the individual concrete support columns. From a distance they were all at different heights and broken up, however from a certain vantage point all of these lines could be viewed as a continuous line. I had fun trying to find the elusive point, although it was taxing having to crouch down here & there and experiencing the grinding of my knees, ouch!

Not too far away on the concourse of the Tidal Barrier, there was an artist attempting to replicate a rainbow using a light on a tri-pod and sprays of water from a number of household objects. Unfortunately it wasn’t appearing to be a success, and as DZ pointed out she was beginning to get some assistance from nature, in that it started to drizzle with rain.

Finally we back tracked to revisit the “Day In, Day Out” video-installation. By day a specific public spot is recorded, this is then in turn is re-projected during night onto the exact same spot. I’ll be revisiting this installation during the course of the week hopefully to borrow a camera to take some snapshots.

I enjoyed most of the exhibits and the journey, although considering the events title, personally I thought some form of laser show would have been spectacular.