When it comes to light art, Detroit is the place to be.
In the fall, two festivals will transform the city's nights with contemporary, multimedia art that uses the medium of light.
On Oct. 5 and 6, DLECTRICITY will bring artists, lighting designers and architects to Woodward in Midtown to create installations of light, sound, performance and video projection.
The outdoor, nighttime festival is a project of Midtown Inc., Art Detroit Now and other art institutions in the city. It's tantalizingly described as melding "sci-fi technology with Victorian spectacle."
As the saying goes, you can never have enough festivals, and DLECTRICITY joins upcoming Figment Detroit, last year's Art X Detroit and the Detroit Design Festival in the freshman class of Detroit arts festivals. In a release, DLECTRICITY founders said the event was planned to coincide with Detroit Gallery Week and the Mid-America College Art Association Conference. They hope to bring thousands of metro Detroiters to the "spectacle."
Overlapping DLECTRICITY, the LUMINALE Detroit Light Festival will stretch from Sept. 23 to Nov. 23. It will be the first year for the TransLUMINALE Biennale, a festival dedicated to light art and design planned by Tate Osten, the founding director of Detroit's own light art museum, Kunsthalle Detroit. Osten plans for the biennial rotate to different cities in the midwest.
But if you can't wait until fall to see what's so special about light art, check out the Detroit Institute of Arts' recent "Moonbeams for Motown" installation, Kusthalle Detroit's "Light Fiction" exhibit from last fall, and "Joshua White and Gary Panter's Light Show," which closes April 29 at MOCAD.
Below, take a peek at the work of international light artists from Kunsthalle Detroit's "Light Fiction" exhibit.
