LIGHT festivals have, in recent decades, become increasingly popular cultural events in cities around the world. From the Luzboa programme in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon to Clydeside’s own GlasGlow, audiences flock to see their cities’ nightscapes transformed by the imaginative, multicoloured work of light artists.
Nowhere is that truer than in Aberdeen, where the annual Spectra festival has garnered many merited plaudits and awards. The city’s famous grey facades – created by the granite in which so much of Aberdeen was built – is a veritable gift to artists whose work requires a backdrop that enhances the colour palette of the art of illumination.
This year, producers Curated Place and Aberdeen City Council have added a new, literary dimension to the Spectra programme. Titled Writ Large, it will be the event’s contribution to the vast national programme that is Scotland’s Year of Stories 2022.
The project will put the words of a series of Scotland-based writers in the hands of light artists and neon art specialists the Solus Neon Sign Co. Many of the texts that will be given the Writ Large treatment come from Edinburgh-based literary collective Neu Reekie.
The group is very pleased to have been invited to take part in such an exciting, collaborative project.
“Neu Reekie are elated to be joining the force and fold of Spectra, working with Curated Place and all the sublime artists in their orbit,” they said. “Together we have summoned a scintillating bunch of writers from across poetry, prose, and music ([and] the realms in between) who’ve produced words that truly coruscate — sentiments worthy of the illuminative futures in store for them.
“The poetics of: Amanda Thomson, Kathryn Joseph, Mae Diansangu, Sheena Blackhall, and… [Neu Reekie founders] Michael Pedersen and Kevin Williamson, will soon be lighting fuses in both the een and imaginations of the denizens of the north east, and we’re pure delighted about that.”
Spectra audiences can expect to see powerful words projected or cast in neon in various city locations. Poet Diansangu, for example, has a strong track record of addressing urgent issues Spectra festival promises to illuminate Aberdeen of racism and social justice in her writing.
It seems appropriate that the boldness and the immediacy of her words should be expressed on a grand scale through Spectra’s combination of electrical illumination and urban architecture.
Lovers of contemporary visual art will be accustomed to seeing the occasional neon piece appearing in art galleries.
Even the great Scottish painter Adrian Wiszniewski has been known to set aside his easel to translate his iconic imagery into neon.
However, when you need neon work on the scale required by a great outdoor light festival such as Spectra, you have to turn to a company like Solus. In fact, here in Scotland, there is no-one like Solus.
The Edinburgh-based company describes itself as, “Scotland’s only dedicated neon sign workshop and the only company that manufactures all our neon glass and signs in-house”.
Councillor Marie Boulton, culture spokesperson for Aberdeen City Council welcomed Spectra 2022’s bringing together of light and words.
“[We] are excited to welcome this major new commission to Spectra,” she said. “Stories are an integral part of our culture here in north-east Scotland and it’s a privilege for us to showcase words from contemporary storytellers, lighting up the city and engaging our communities.
“Curated Place and Neu Reekie have brought together a diverse and brilliant group of writers to share their stories with us, helping Spectra kick off Scotland’s Year of Stories in style.”
In addition to the Writ Large project, this year’s festival boasts its usual programme of large scale light works. The brilliantly created pieces on show prove emphatically that there is much more to light festivals than colourful illumination of urban architecture.
Together, by art collective Lucid Creates, is a spectacular case in point.
The work is comprised of three huge rings that are suspended from four giant steel pillars and seem to hover above the heads of the audience. Within the rings texts appear, like the famous electronic lettering in Times Square in New York City. The sentences and phrases promote the ideas of collective experience and human coexistence. Combined with a series of visual effects and a bespoke soundscape, the enormous installation impressed audiences during last year’s River of Light festival in Liverpool.
Offering very different experiences, but equally impressive in scale, are Gaia and Museum of the Moon by Luke Jerram.
Using detailed Nasa imagery of our planet, Gaia offers audiences a floating representation of Earth that is 3D and seven metres in diameter. In our times of climate crisis and pandemic, the work promises to be meditative and emotive.
Jerram’s latest piece, Museum of the Moon, follows similar artistic principles.
A meticulously detailed image of our moon combines with moonlight and an immersive sound composition created by award-winning composer Ivor Novello.
Light art collective Travelling Light Circus (TLC) also brings two pieces to Spectra. The artists describe Hy percube! as, “an infinity mirror, but in three dimensions”.
Audience members are invited to get close to the cube in which 2500 LED lights are mirrored endlessly “to create a world of infinitely repeating lights”.
In addition, “something else very strange happens too”, says TLC. “When you look at the opposite face, you see your own eye in the centre of all the mesmerising patterns of light – giving you a very eerie and unearthly experience!”
TLC’s other installation art work, Pendulum Wave Machine, is described as “a truly wondrous sight to behold".
"Shimmering silver balls hang in the air like floating mercury, before being set into motion, dancing their way through patterns of order and patterns of chaos that have to be seen to be believed.”
The piece exemplifies the company’s mission to, “make people smile and laugh and most of all, to go ‘wow!’”.
That’s a very worthwhile mission, and one that, in both word and image, the 2022 programme of Spectra is on course to deliver.
Spectra runs in Aberdeen from February 10-13, from 6:30pm to 10pm each evening. For further information, visit: spectrafestival.co.uk
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