UNESCO’s International Year of Light initiative has certainly caught fire in Manchester. This weekend sees both the city centre’s Enlighten (throughout December) and Salford Quays’ Lightwaves (12-27 Dec) take centre stage, highlighting (quite literally) the joy of optical technologies and digital art. After all, how better to catch public attention than with a brood of giant glowing bunnies?

The joy of digital art is its endless capacity to surprise and delight...

The first of Lightwaves’ trio of art installations, Amanda Parer’s Intrude, evokes furry childlike innocence from a distance. Up close, however, the towering rabbits’ scale becomes rather more ominous. Having overwhelmed species in the artist’s native Australia, their cuteness belies a serious environmental problem.

 

Meanwhile, Marcos Zotes’ Amaze also uses a playful concept to explore deeper meanings. His psychedelic maze of light and shadow challenges participants with narrow pathways and otherworldly surrounds, where the notion of getting lost becomes all too real.

 

The festival’s final installation is Mads Christensen’s Cathedral of Mirrors, in which twelve motion-sensitive mirrored columns alight in response to crowds. Designed to provoke quiet reflection and wonder, the interactive sculpture emits an undulating glow; a meditative beacon against the night sky.

Mads - a Danish artist and software architect - uses custom circuitry, programming and LEDs to explore how patterns of light affect people emotionally. He said: "The project reflects upon the topic of scale, and the exuberant surface qualities one often observes in ordinary objects when magnified. The installation acts as a space multiplier, using form and light to produce an immersive and disorienting spatial experience at a scale seemingly larger than the project’s diminutive footprint.”

Cathedral of Mirrors teaser from Mads Christensen on Vimeo.

 

Quays Culture Programme Producer, Lucy Dusgate said: “The programme this year is testament to the emerging interest in digital arts in the North West. It’s important to us that the public experience and enjoy these visually captivating installations, and take this unique opportunity to explore three major artworks that are leading the way in the digital realm, and that have never exhibited together before.

“The joy of digital art is its endless capacity to surprise and delight people from all walks of life. The artists we work with are some of the best in the world, and they understand that the public’s interactions shape their light-based artworks just as much as the artworks shape the public spaces where they’re on display.”

Lightwaves runs at the Salford Quays plaza and in MediaCityUK from 12 to 27 December. More info at quaysculture.com.