e-luminate Cambridge, UK
Now in its fourth year, the e-Luminate Cambridge festival in the UK was once again met with enthusiasm by the general public and the lighting world, with contributions from key players in the industry.
An internationally recognised multi-arts event that animates the city of Cambridge each year in February, e-Luminate is supported by some heavy weights in the sector and consists of six days and nights of displays, talks and workshops all around light.
Stunning architectural lighting projects bathed famous Cambridge buildings and provided great entertainment for the thousands of visitors in the cold February nights. This year’s gold sponsors included returning sponsors Pulsar and Philips, which worked respectively on the Senate House and the University Library buildings. The latter was commissioned to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the University Library during the acclaimed festival.
SGM was involved as Silver sponsor for the third time running creating beautiful choreography for both the inside and outside of Great St Mary’s Church; along with two new sponsors, who joined at top tier level: Lumenpulse, as Gold sponsor, and Paviom, as Bronze Sponsor.
The team at Lumenpulse collaborated with artist Gabby Shawcross to create a beautiful pastel coloured moving light installation on the Fitzwilliam Museum also celebrating an important anniversary this year – its 200th. For this piece the artist selected and sampled 200 colours from objects in the museum to create the colour palette for the lighting. Eve Gaut from Lumenpulse commented: “e-Luminate offered Lumenpulse a wonderful platform in which to engage with the lighting community and beyond. We were delighted to be gold sponsors and support the festival by hosting various events around the city and lighting the impressive Fitzwilliam façade. We are already looking forward to supporting e-luminate 2017!”
Paviom put its expert team led by Simon White to work on a lighting scheme for the Cambridge Judge Business School, which at the same time, housed art work using The Technology Partnership’s Mirage display technology. Created by Zero Kb and Visual Poke, the sculptural artwork exploited the unique ability of a Mirage display to appear transparent while able to display a static or video image. Comprising 23 small-scale Mirage display panels, suspended as rotating pieces of glass form the multiple facets of the sculpture, each Mirage display showed specially created images.
Over at the historic Guildhall, a richly coloured lighting display was created with a collection of Iluminarc fixtures from Chauvet. A Victorian style, natural stone building located in the centre of historic Cambridge and owned by the city, it provided an ideal backdrop for the interplay of vivid hues produced by the Colorist Pod 7Qa and Colorist Panel 8Q. Strategically positioned on the building’s balcony by lighting designer Simon Cox, the RGBA fixtures accented the distinctive architectural features of the popular Cambridge landmark. To illuminate the window bays across the façade, Cox placed a further six Colorist Panel 8Qa fixtures on the first floor balcony to work in unison with the Colorist Panel 7Qa fixtures.
The organisers were thrilled by the positive response received with Alessandra Caggiano, Festival Director and Curator, commenting: “It is great to see that so many people in lighting have taken an interest in showcasing their products and designs on the e-Luminate Cambridge platform. The festival is growing from strength to strength and we are already looking for more companies to join us in 2017.”
Simon Fisher, Vice President of SLL, joined the organisation’s Advisory Board for this year’s event and commented: “It has been a pleasure to work with the e-Luminate team to deliver the festival in its fourth year. Cambridge offers an amazing backdrop of history and architecture to showcase lighting, light art and lighting design. The buzz on social media this year compared to previous years definitely highlighted the continued and growing interest in the festival and it was great that a regional event could attract national and international interest. Something that we hope to increase next year.”
Senate House – pic credit David Johnson at Cambridge News
