| Description | Symposium Organiser The symposium brings together academics and practitioners who research and practice in the field of light projection and digital heritage. Speakers include Projection Studios (Northern Lights, Crown of Light) Heinrich and Palmer (Ship of the Gods, Floe, Travelling Light) and Cheriton Light Festival.
Light festivals and installations involve local communities while having a significant effect on the visitor economy, generating up to £1.1 billion in the UK (Guo, Lin, Meng & Zhao, 2011). Over one hundred festivals take place globally (Giordano and Ong, 2017) from Lyons and Sydney to Lumiere, the biannual festival of light which is held in Durham, estimates that it has received 1 million visitors to the festival since 2009, when the event began. Festivals such as Vivid illuminate the landmarks of capital cities, but the malleability of projection mapping means that installations are adapted to any environment, from hyperreal spectaculars to suburbs and forests to coastlines.
Light festivals achieve far more than generating income for the visitor economy, they add atmosphere by making the ordinary extraordinary (Edensor, 2012; Edensor, 2015; Edensor and Sumartojo, 2018; Lovell and Griffin, 2018). They alter fragile historic environments, reinventing intangible cultural heritage and re-imagining local history, folklore and myth. These highly creative and transfixing installations, often involving public participation and transformational communal experiences. The hyperreality and sheer magic of projection mapping software and animation techniques can create the most authentic and enchanting of sensations (Lovell, 2018; Lovell and Griffin, 2018).
Edensor, T. (2012). Illuminated atmospheres: Anticipating and reproducing the flow of affective experience in Blackpool. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 30(6), 1103–1122.
Edensor, T. (2015) ‘Light design and atmosphere’. Visual Communication, 14(3), pp.331-350.
Edensor, T. & Sumartojo, S. (2018). Reconfiguring familiar worlds with light projection: The Gertrude street projection festival, 2017. GeoHumanities, 4(1), 112–131.
Giordano, E. (2018). Outdoor lighting design as a tool for tourist development: the case of Valladolid. European Planning Studies, 26(1), pp.55-74.
Giordano, E. and Ong, C.E. (2017) Light festivals, policy mobilities and urban tourism. Tourism Geographies, 19(5), pp.699–716.
Lovell, J. (2018). Hyperreal light Simulacra: Performing heritage buildings. In J. Rickly & E. Vidon (Eds.), Authenticity & tourism: Materialities, perceptions, experiences (pp. 181–200). Bingley: Emerald.
Lovell, J., & Griffin, H. (2018). Fairy tale tourism: the architectural projection mapping of magically real and irreal festival lightscapes. Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events. 1-15. |
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