J Babies' Dad: i Light Marina Bay 2014

Media Invite

As Marina Bay AmBAYssadors, a group of media friends were invited for an exclusive 1-hour guided tour of the i Light Marina Bay 2014.

Festival Info
i Light Marina Bay, Asia’s only sustainable light art festival, returns in 2014 with a new theme Light+heART. The light art festival will feature 28 innovative and environmentally sustainable light art installations from around the world, transforming the Marina Bay Waterfront into a magical space of light and colour for the public to celebrate both public spaces and creativity.

A full array of events, programmes and fun activities have been lined up from 7-30 Mar (7:30pm – 11pm) for the public to spend a relaxing and dazzling night out at the Marina Bay Waterfront. Free guided tours are available, just click on this link to sign up.

Curatorial Team
This year’s festival is helmed by a curatorial team comprising ONG&ONG’s Ms Ong Swee Hong, Mr Andrew Lee and Mr Tai Lee Siang. With a track record of more than four decades in this industry, ONG&ONG offers a complete 360º solution that covers aspect of the construction business. The company aims to engage the public through sustainable light art installations that are thought provoking yet ‘light-hearted’ – bringing home the message on sustainability with unique, happy and heartfelt installations that not only delight but also inspire contemplation. Using Marina Bay as a canvas, invited artists came together and transform Marina Bay into the largest public art gallery.

Festival Map

Sustainability Overview
A key objective of i Light Marina Bay is to advocate environmentally-responsible behaviour for a sustainable future, and to promote Marian Bay as a culturally vibrant and sustainable urban waterfront precinct. A recurring initiative of i Light Marina Bay is the “Switch Off, Turn Up” campaign, where stakeholders in and around Marina Bay are invited to switch off non-essential lighting and turn up air-conditioning temperatures during the festival period.

Installations
Here are some interesting light art installations for your reference.

The Wishing! Tree by The Living! Project (Singapore)
The tree represents the positive hopes and dreams of visitors wishing the best for our world. It encourages everyone to imagine what their perfect world could be like and wish for it on the tree.

Happy Croco by Bibi (France)
A luminous 20m long sculpture, whose backbone is made of traffic cones. This urban crocodile uses types of LEDs and low energy light bulbs. Happy Croco is both a work of land art, design, a light source and a visual art installation. This installation’s relation to the theme comes from the delightful crocodile that the artist brings into the city, but upon closer examination, it is made from our everyday discarded items that have been given a new lease of, and a most delightful, life.

Mimosa by Jason Bruges Studio (United Kingdom)
Mimosa is a interactive artwork displaying behaviour that mimics responsive plant systems. The piece was inspired by the Mimosa family of plants, which change kinetically to suit their environmental conditions.

Joujou-Ours by Uno Lai (Taiwan)
Uno believes that interactive arts are not just about technology, but it should reflect simple acts to express love. Inspired by childhood memories of hugging soft toys to sleep, Joujou-Ours is an installation that encourages all to come close and embrace these light installations, and with these close physical interactions, the embedded lights will create a magical kaleidoscope of colours.

#WeHeartLight by Light Collective (United Kingdom)
Making light is open to everybody and Light Collective demonstrates this by teaching about 200 locals to each make a simple light box, personalised with images and text, with red as the predominant colour for half of these boxes.

Celebration of Life by Justin Lee with Dorier Asia Pte Ltd (Singapore)
This is a playful commentary on the role and value of traditional culture in our contemporary society. Through the use of pop-art as a playful medium in this work, this installation celebrates Asian values in our modern society through a tongue-in-cheek manner. In this 3D projection installation for the ArtScience Museum, Justin playfully blends traditional Eastern iconography with modern-day symbols of our global capitalist culture. This approach suggests cultural resilience – the ability of Asian culture, to survive, to withstand, to endure, and to adapt to the changing contemporary society.

Digital Wattle by Out of the Dark (New Zealand)
The artists translate an iconic element of nature from their homeland into an installation. Adapting the form of the Golden Wattle into a series of light installations, the Digital Wattle is a device to explore the interplay between individual ethnic groups co-existing in one city. When the flowers sway gently in the wind, they will slowly change from pure white to different colours to represent the new mix of cultures residing in the city. In the process, it brings a slice of nature into our urban environment.

1.26 Singapore by Janet Echelman (USA)
Sustainability can relate to the memory and preservation of the traditional craftsmanship and in 1.26, we see an extreme innovative way of preserving a craft that might be seen an obsolete by most. Janet has been inspired by the traditional craftsmanship of fish net weaving and lace making in the construct of her urban sculptures and has re-interpreted the technique to new heights through the technology that she had utilised, allowing all to appreciate traditional crafts in a new form.
In the piece for i Light Marina Bay 2014, Janet’s luminous 1.26 sculpture will suspend over the floating platform. The form and content has been drawn from observing Earth’s interconnected systems. Echelman used laboratory research from NASA and NOAA which documented the effects of the 2010 earthquake in Chile — the historic shock resulted in the shortening of the earth’s day by 1.26 microseconds, which became the influence for the installation’s name. The colourful volumetric piece takes the shape of a tsunami sweeping across the ocean.
This piece not only reminds us of today’s ever changing face of the earth and the effects natural disasters have on people, but it is also a piece that highlights the courageousness of the survivors and the interconnected populations who are fighting against these effects of climate change in today’s context.

Cloud by Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett (Canada)
CLOUD illuminates the curatorial themes of i Light Marina Bay 2014 on a number of levels. As the sculpture is created from both new and recycled materials, combining the aesthetic of incandescent light bulbs with the brilliance of energy-efficient bulbs, CLOUD creates a playful commentary about the changing face of sustainability. While the piece is bright and attractive to audiences, the internal contrast of old and new light technologies provides a critical dialogue about energy, sources of light and sustainable progress, while maintaining an optimistic tone of magic, hope, and beauty.
CLOUD invites strangers to come together beneath a dazzling raincloud and play. The edition planned for the Festival will be a unique evolution of CLOUD incorporating a more playful system of interaction than previous incarnations, encouraging a “light hearted” spirit of exploration and discovery. By pulling on a switch, the viewer is able to trigger a quantifiable shift within the greater aesthetic of CLOUD, visually highlighting the power of an individual’s ability to impact progress and achieve significant change. However, the real magic happens when multiple viewers work as a community towards a unified shift.