When it came to finding a second act, Luminato had its work cut out for it. The arts festival launched in a particularly visible fashion last year, announcing itself to the city with a forest of pulsating searchlights on the waterfront. With this year's festival (running June 6 to June 15), how do you top that?
In the wee hours of the night next week, the answer will start to come together in Yonge-Dundas Square.
With the help of some of the city's top architects and designers, the plaza is about to be transformed into a surreal dancehall.
"It's like a hybrid between installation art and a stage set, at an epic scale," said Tom Payne who, along with Bruce Kuwabara, his partner at KPMB architects, designed and art-directed the project.
Inspired in part by a concept from noted set designer Michael Levine, the square's temporary overhaul will see a canopy of sorts raised over the plaza, in the form of 250 illuminated industrial-strength balloons hung from cables that span the square. Each balloon will be lit from inside with an LED light, the same kind that are used to light up the CN Tower by night.
And, much like the tower, the balloons will be putting on their own computer-controlled light show. Not only can they be programmed to provide a variety of different ambiences for the square, but they will respond in real time to sounds picked up by microphones placed around the square.
The need to create different ambiences on the fly was acute. For the first six nights of the festival, the square will be given over to a different kind of dance each night. In what Luminato calls "Light on Your Feet," instructors will offer free public lessons in different styles every day, from swing to tango to Bollywood, with live music to dance to afterward.
Beyond the dancing, the physical creation of the installation itself, titled Light Play, has proved to be a tall order, bringing together architects, engineers, artists and a variety of contractors who might never have worked together otherwise.
Stringing 250 oversized PVC balloons, each 1.2 to 1.8 metres in diameter, from kilometres of specially ordered nautical ropes isn't as simple as it sounds. Contractors had to be found who could tie the nautical knots that hold it all together. Lashing everything down requires the force of 73 concrete cubes - the engineers involved say the weight is equivalent to three lanes of Volvos encircling the square. Custom-made telephone poles will be used as masts to stay the ropes, each placed in footings designed to provide the necessary "give" to the flexing structure. The problem isn't just weight, but wind.
"When you have 250 balloons side by side, you have the biggest sail in Toronto," says KPMB's Brad Hindson, who is managing the project. (KPMB provided its services to the festival pro bono.)
The installation is keeping an eye toward the environment; helium being an increasingly scarce resource, the balloons are being inflated with air instead, and donated afterward to professors at York University, who can use them for atmospheric research. Meanwhile, the entire project is designed to come and go without so much as scuffing the square below. Not that, surrounded by blaring light boards and the hulk of just-completed multiplex Toronto Life Square, it's necessarily a neutral venue.
"Dundas Square has always been a contested space. Is it public? Is it not public?" notes Gabe Sawhney, the artist who is responsible for the interactive lighting installation. "Whatever happens, it's going to be interesting."
Mr. Sawhney and his colleagues will be patrolling the square with their laptops throughout the event, using a wireless network to continually adjust the lighting. He says he is particularly interested in seeing how the public interacts with the installation in the hours after the crowds have dispersed. "People will be interested in sticking around to play around with the lights and give it a shot for it themselves," he says.
Much like the searchlight installation that lent an icon to the festival last year, the installation will let people play with light on a grand scale. David Pecaut, Luminato's co-chair, says he sees it as a kind of home base for the festival this year - and one that intractably ties itself to the city's landscape. "I hope, in the end, that Luminato feels like an event that could take place nowhere else."
Installation runs June 6 to 12 in Yonge-Dundas Square. Program details at http://www.luminato.com.
Light Play
Among the bits and pieces of the Light Play installation:
250 PVC balloons and LED lights
2.35 kilometres of rope
73 concrete cubes
0.91 km of aircraft cable
805 connections (bowline knots, cable loops, nautical cleats)
47 turnbuckles (a device for adjusting the tension of ropes, cables and tie rods)
8 microphones
3 computers
Ivor Tossell
