In the middle of February 2017, we hosted the Winter Cities Shake-Up conference. We had some amazing speakers come and share leading practices for making cities great in winter. Sabine DeSchutter was one of these speakers, and she rocked the conference. We learned about how lighting reflects our identity and history – how light is a cultural symbol, and how we need to be mindful in the way we manage darkness. (Sound intriguing? Her presentation will be uploaded here shortly.)
She also did a temporary lighting installation on Rice Howard Way during the conference. Hopefully, you were lucky enough to play with it/in it. Here she is building it with some help from Sam, the other Sam, and his cousin, the electrician.
Photo courtesy of Shayne Woodsmith, Make Something Edmonton
Photo courtesy of Shayne Woodsmith, Make Something Edmonton
This is what Sabine wrote to describe her concept:
“Creative lighting makes places more inviting, magical, fun. It uses darkness as a palette and can greatly impact our impressions of dark places. R + B + G = W combine the three primary colours [of light]—red, green, and blue—to create white light: a phenomenon called additive colour mixing. As people step into the white light and moved through the installation, different coloured shadows appear and change with every step.”
This is what it looked like when it was all set up:
Photo courtesy of Shayne Woodsmith, Make Something Edmonton
And here are some people playing with the light. How much fun would it be to have more interactive, playful lighting like this in our city? Lighting has the power to make our city more engaging, memorable and magical.
Photo courtesy of Sue Holdsworth