Light Ballet - intersects the landscape, reconnecting community sky and water.
- Challenging the idea of the Gallery and the Usual Urban setting for light art, Light Ballet is instead presented on the water slowly moving by night trough riverside communities.
- The 7 minute Artwork animated to a connected in sync soundscape reachable via a website.
- In the creation process Artists Matt and Mick connected with 10 schools along the journey path. Each school used a worksheet to create lighting looks for the artwork.
- The "Looks" were then visualised in a 3d environment and put together to create the final light animation.
Soundscape
David Kitt
The installation was accompanied by a newly composed soundscape by David Kitt. Using a familiar Irish musical time signature, intermixed with words from Poet Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe and his own vocal, David Kitt brings us on a journey through, river, ‘spirit land’ and the surrounds. Once entwined, these lands, the people, the river and their connection in music, words and song deliver us to a new place, a spiritual journey along the river through its edgelands, to a familiar place.
Drawing inspiration from William Butler Yeats’s own Song of Wandering Aengus, the soundscape for Light Ballet was created by David Kitt, with words from Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe’s poem Wandersong in collaboration with Mick Murray and Matthew Cregan.
Connecting with Commuity - Schools Project
We connected with 8 schools along the Shannon river trough a schools project.
We created a worksheet with an instructional video to draw on the children's creativity to create lighting looks. The worksheet had a boat and 8 lights and 7 dots. Using a provided colour palette they connected the lights to the dots with lines of coloured light. Children being children some decided to add their own colours and challenge and indeed improve the creative !
In a year of home schooling, we wanted the children to do have haptic connection rather than computer based.
We imported these looks into the lighting console and used them as the "focus" positions for the final artwork.
Its interesting after years of designing lighting and lighting "looks" to see the children's input and level of creativity.
Schools Project - Worksheet Lighting Looks
Light Ballet was funded as part of Brightening Air by the Irish Arts Council
Light Ballet was commissioned by Brightening Air
Light Ballet was produced by Culture Works
Light Ballet was supported by Clay Paky Lighting
