It was an absolute privilege to spend time with Finnish Light Artist, Kari Kola prior to Lighting the Sound this weekend. In this week’s video I talk to Kari about what is the largest light installation on earth.
I found Kari to be a very gracious and generous man who was more than willing to take me out to where he and his team had established 13 towers, up to 20 metres in height. The towers each carried LED lights, nearly 750 in total, including 15 lights that shot red pencil beams into the sky.
It was interesting to read people’s comments after the event. Some people felt the whole event was “underwhelming” (I assume that is the opposite of overwhelming). In this video, Kari explains that while many people will come to the lights expecting movement, his intention was to focus on one thing. He said he wanted people to be still. The emphasis of the installation was to focus on Albany during its bicentenary. The movement, he said, was not in the lights but in the environment around them. True to form, the clouds proved to be what moved, and along with the movement came a changing panorama of green and red light.
I found that photographically the best technique to bring out Kari’s purpose was using time-lapse. This had the effect of focusing on the lights as a static display, while everything around, including the environment, moved. It was a bit of a buzz when a ship decided to leave the port as I was doing a time-lapse! It was also exciting that the STS Leeuwin was in Albany this weekend and got into the pictures.
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