So it's been a week since I attended this event, and I don't regret going! I had been meaning to go this event for a while, but unfortunately I was only about to attend 1/3 days of the event. Usually I'm rather organised but I was quite last minute this time... this led me to go on the final day of event... Opps. As someone who has a great interest in photography, I had to go - I'm not pro aha... I wish!
Wow I just released I forgot to actually mention the name of the event... Apologies! If you missed the title, I attended the "Lumiere London" last weekend. The festival has been held in Durham since 2009, and finally has been brought London this year. It is known to be the biggest light festival in the UK. Check out the trailer below:
Anyways, I was aiming to see as many attractions as I could but as we only had about 4 hours? It was quite difficult to try to go see everything so we aimed to go to the one's which were convenient. We actually completed the area twice. The second time was due an extra addition to our group so we decided to show her around but it was worth it! And we got to see a few extra attractions whilst we were at it aha.
When we originally started our adventure, we went without knowing where much of the attractions were. We began in Piccadilly Circus due to my friend, Katrina spotting one of the art pieces whilst she walked past the area. We went with the flow where if we saw something which seemed to be connected to Lumiere we would pull ourselves to the location. However, during our second trip around we managed to get a leaflet which gave us a map (as shown above) with all the different locations for the installations.
Time to introduce my photography! I tried my best to capture the images throughout Central London, and I'm not gonna lie, it was rather cold... Trust the British weather... So our first place to go to was Piccadilly as I stated before. Here we encountered "Luminéoles" by Porté Par Le Vent. I remember when we were watching this, we were listening to the accompanying music which sounded rather magical - personally it reminded me of Harry Potter. Especially with the passing of Alan Rickman (RIP) I think the timing was rather suited to the situation.
Yeah... I might have gone a bit overboard with photos... And this isn't even all of them aha. My friends and I spent quite a while trying to work out what they were... from whales to fish to... some other inappropriate comments... We really wanted to try controlling them ourselves but we weren't allowed unfortunately. Those who were flying the fish were dressed specifically in white.
Moving on, we moved towards Regent Street, Oxford Street and Carnaby Street. We walked past an interesting site in which we ended up losing people in the crowd... There was a small box where you could view the exhibit. We hadn't quite left Piccadilly it seems, as we saw the "195 Piccadilly" by NOVAK.
From the website it states "195 Piccadilly explores the different genres of cinema and television using images from the BAFTA's Archives". I really liked the watercolour effect used to form an animation style art piece. Animated exhibits are really interesting to watch since I really like moving images - might explain my love for Japanese anime aha.
We moved towards Carnaby Street after finding one another through the crowd. But ended up seeing an elephant's ass. Well... Honestly I was rather confused... But then assumed the front of the elephant would be on the other side, however rather than walking through to see the other side we proceeded elsewhere.
Supposedly around the Soho area, Broadwick Street (which is opposite Carnaby Street) we found a illuminated walking woman. It was quite cool but I wasn't as interested as it looked rather plain in comparison to the others, but that's my personal opinion. I found someone standing next to me reporting about the piece, probably highlighting the Lumiere event. Here's a short clip of "Shaida Walking" by Julian Opie:
Apologies for the shakiness, I was aiming to try and get a video in action before the show ended. I didn't exactly want to wait for the next one since after walking past it again the performance is different. This one was rather dynamic and really intriguing to watch. However, I did manage to catch some images of the different stages of the lights appearing.
The next piece we saw happened to be interesting when you looked at it from different perspectives. When we first saw it from afar, we weren't too sure what it was. As we got closer we still didn't really know but what we saw was different when we stood right under the piece. We realised it was made of netting and once again some inappropriate comments were made - Katrina... The art was constantly changing in colour, and it was vibrant. I really liked this piece because of it's colour changing effect.
You can watch the process in which the colours change as I tried to take a picture of each of the stages of the colour transformation. As we moved closer to the art, as you can see the perception of the piece is different in comparison as we were standing right below.
Before I forget. This piece is called "1.8 London" by Janet Echelman / Studio Echelman. When I first heard the name of the exhibit I didn't really understand it's relevance. However, it seems the enormous net piece was based off the one of the most atonishing impacts of the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami in 2011. Due to this earthquake, it sped up the earth's rotation and shortened that day by 1.8 microseconds. Thus explaining the name given to this piece.
As walked back, we managed to see the front of the elephant. After seeing the elephant's ass, it was reassuring knowing the piece wasn't just it's ass... The piece is called "Eléphantastic!" by Top’là Design / Catherine Garret. The name is so creative ahaha, but I guess the name as a more understandable link in comparison to the others which I was confused about. But because I was confused I was more interested to find out the meaning behind the names. Here's a short clip of "Eléphantastic!" below:
We proceeded back through Oxford Circus and through Piccadilly before appearing in front of Leicester Square. At Leicester Square, I think I was most captivated by the lighting arrangement. There were so many lighting designs all in one area. The arrangement is called "Garden of Light" by TILT.
The only thing I did regret was not going to see some of the light attractions located in King's Cross. There was an awesome rainbow lit tunnel called "Pipette" as well as "Litre of Light" which some of the Central Saint Martins' students contributed to creating.
I hope the Lumiere comes to London again! Since I totally want to try cover any of the light attractions I wasn't able to see this year. I hope you enjoyed my blog post, although I can say there is much more photography to words. For anymore information on Lumiere London, check out the Visit London website below:
http://www.visitlondon.com/lumiere
Thank you for reading, and I'll be sure to update soon on some more London events and attractions!
From the website it states "195 Piccadilly explores the different genres of cinema and television using images from the BAFTA's Archives". I really liked the watercolour effect used to form an animation style art piece. Animated exhibits are really interesting to watch since I really like moving images - might explain my love for Japanese anime aha.
We moved towards Carnaby Street after finding one another through the crowd. But ended up seeing an elephant's ass. Well... Honestly I was rather confused... But then assumed the front of the elephant would be on the other side, however rather than walking through to see the other side we proceeded elsewhere.
Supposedly around the Soho area, Broadwick Street (which is opposite Carnaby Street) we found a illuminated walking woman. It was quite cool but I wasn't as interested as it looked rather plain in comparison to the others, but that's my personal opinion. I found someone standing next to me reporting about the piece, probably highlighting the Lumiere event. Here's a short clip of "Shaida Walking" by Julian Opie:
Moving on, we walked towards Oxford Circus and saw "Keyframes" by Groupe LAPS / Thomas Veyssière.
Apologies for the shakiness, I was aiming to try and get a video in action before the show ended. I didn't exactly want to wait for the next one since after walking past it again the performance is different. This one was rather dynamic and really intriguing to watch. However, I did manage to catch some images of the different stages of the lights appearing.
You can watch the process in which the colours change as I tried to take a picture of each of the stages of the colour transformation. As we moved closer to the art, as you can see the perception of the piece is different in comparison as we were standing right below.
Before I forget. This piece is called "1.8 London" by Janet Echelman / Studio Echelman. When I first heard the name of the exhibit I didn't really understand it's relevance. However, it seems the enormous net piece was based off the one of the most atonishing impacts of the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami in 2011. Due to this earthquake, it sped up the earth's rotation and shortened that day by 1.8 microseconds. Thus explaining the name given to this piece.
As walked back, we managed to see the front of the elephant. After seeing the elephant's ass, it was reassuring knowing the piece wasn't just it's ass... The piece is called "Eléphantastic!" by Top’là Design / Catherine Garret. The name is so creative ahaha, but I guess the name as a more understandable link in comparison to the others which I was confused about. But because I was confused I was more interested to find out the meaning behind the names. Here's a short clip of "Eléphantastic!" below:
We proceeded back through Oxford Circus and through Piccadilly before appearing in front of Leicester Square. At Leicester Square, I think I was most captivated by the lighting arrangement. There were so many lighting designs all in one area. The arrangement is called "Garden of Light" by TILT.
I think this was the location which I took the most pictures... I even lost people on the way because I got so into taking pictures... I got carried away opps. I experimented different angles as well which came out really cool which I'm really happy about. Even had to stand on a bench at some point because I was too short...
For our final location, we went to Trafalgar Square. We actually saw two of the light attractions, but I only focused on one of them. We saw the "Centre Point Lights" however there wasn't really much to it, which was disappointing so I didn't really take my time to take any pictures of it. However, we also saw "Plastic Islands" by Luzinterruptus. I'm not gonna lie, the artistic group's name sounds really cool aha. As there are two fountains located in Trafalgar Square, it was quite a contrast seeing the usual fountain to the one decorated with plastic.
The only thing I did regret was not going to see some of the light attractions located in King's Cross. There was an awesome rainbow lit tunnel called "Pipette" as well as "Litre of Light" which some of the Central Saint Martins' students contributed to creating.
I hope the Lumiere comes to London again! Since I totally want to try cover any of the light attractions I wasn't able to see this year. I hope you enjoyed my blog post, although I can say there is much more photography to words. For anymore information on Lumiere London, check out the Visit London website below:
http://www.visitlondon.com/lumiere
Thank you for reading, and I'll be sure to update soon on some more London events and attractions!
