Articulated Intersect … bright lights in winter again

Last year’s inaugural Dark Mofo festival — and particularly the spectacular light show Spectra [Tasmania] — clearly struck a chord with Tasmanians, because the enthusiasm with which people have been looking forward to this year’s festival has been palpable. The large-scale attraction this year is another spotlight installation called Articulated Intersect. There are six sets of three spotlights, located at various places around Hobart’s waterfront, and the cool bit is that each set has a lever that allows people to move the lights across the sky.

I wasn’t going to stop on my way past tonight (things are still crazy busy) but then I wondered when I’d get the chance otherwise, and so changed my mind and found myself a parking spot down on the docks. There was a queue at the nearest set of lights, as people waited patiently to have a turn at steering the beams, and there was an air of community — like last year — with a gentle buzz in the air as people embraced the excitement of a winter night in which so many folk were out and about.

I had my turn sweeping my set of lights across the mizzly sky, and, like last year, I loved the effects of the rain in the spotlight (the last photo is a cropped and enlarged version of the one below, showing how far droplets travel in 1/5 of a second!).

So, which of the two installations did I like better? There was something eerie, haunting and powerful about last year’s Spectra [Tasmania], with its static beams reaching far into the sky, and the sound effects were atmospheric. The fact that it was in a single location meant that the audience — or, at least, those who were observing it from up close — were all in the one location and were experiencing it together. Articulated Intersect, on the other hand, is more playful and allows much more tactile audience interaction, yet there’s a strange simultaneous unity and disconnect, as you feel connected to the people in your queue at your set of lights, but the only sense you have of the other participants and what they are experiencing is in the movement of the other beams in the mist above your head.

I liked both of them a lot: big lights in the dark are just too much fun.