Guide to i Light Marina Bay 2017: Dazzling Installations Not To Be Missed

Media Invite

i Light Marina Bay, the sustainable light art Festival that runs along the perimeter of Marina Bay, returns from 3 to 26 March 2017!

Setting the Bay aglow with 20 sustainable light art installations around the Marina Bay waterfront, the festival is a showcase of light art installations created by artists from Singapore and around the world. The light art installations are designed with energy-saving lighting or environmentally-friendly materials and the light festival has been so well-received that since last year, it will be staged annually rather than bi-annually!

Taking on the theme “Light & Nature” this year, the 20 light art installations invite the public to consider the relationship of light with nature and the city, and how light reconciles the push and pull between the constructed and the natural. Through it all, it serves to remind us of the importance of environmentally-friendly habits. And best of all, it is FREE!

There will be tons of other fringe events too - like an Uncle Ringo Carnival! - but just strolling through the installations is going to be a treat for the whole family.

Like last year, the bulk of the light installations are congregated at two main areas - The Promontory/Bayfront Event Space (beside Marina Bay City Gallery) AND The Floating Platform.

But in addition to the light installations, i Light Marina Bay 2017 will also feature - for the first time - three distinct festival hubs: Art-Zoo for imaginative play, The Fantastical World of eco.me for sustainability-themed activities and Gastrobeats for food and music.

But more on those later, I promise. First, here are some of the installations that families should not miss if you are planning a fun night out by Marina Bay in the next 3 weeks:

The Promontory Area

MOONFLOWER

MoonFlower is a luminescent display of flowers that glow in the dark, inviting passers-by to take a walk through the garden in the dark. Each individual flower is powered by its own solar-powered LED, and can be adopted at a minimum of $5 with all proceeds going towards the Garden City Fund. If you wish to adopt one, you can do so at https://pozible.com/project/moonflower-i-light-marina-bay and collect the moonflowers after the festival period.

KALEIDOSCOPIC MONOLITH

Evoking a kaleidoscope, the colourful patterns created by Kaleidoscopic Monolith resists a singular meaning and instead provokes participants to discover their own allusions through interactive play.

i LIGHT YOU SO MUCH

A kinetic installation consisting of lines and light, the installation is made out of bamboo – believed to store positive energy – and moves in reaction to wind, and visualises this hidden energy in the presence of light.

YOU LOOKIN' AT ME?

A quirky installation, you see giant glowing eyeballs with colourful irises staring into the distance, and snapping to attention when a visitor approaches. In a primal response, the eyeballs start to look more skittish, and attempt to“scare” the intruder away and morph into a series of different eyes to dissuade the curious onlookers from hanging around for too long.

NORTHERN LIGHTS

Northern Lights is a light-art piece inspired by the enthralling experience of the aurora borealis, the spectacular and poetic natural light phenomenon that occurs in the sky of the northern hemisphere. Using a carefully programmed light story performed through 100 vertically positioned light lines equipped with LED sources, the dynamic movement of the lights evokes a mesmerising and poetic sensation in an unpredictable flow which interacts intimately with its surroundings.

THE COLORFUL GARDEN OF LIGHT
(Clifford Square)

The Colorful Garden of Light’s curious plants scale adorn the Marina Bay, and offer the audience a chance to celebrate the new spring. A delightful courtship between these peonies the multicoloured butterflies takes place in a dazzling chromatic show, changing colours and bringing an unusual and surprising relationship between nature and the city.

Bayfront Event Space

(between Marina Bay City Gallery & Marina Bay Sands)

HORIZONTAL INTERFERENCE

Make no mistake, I declare this light installation the MOST instagrammable of all.

Formed by a colourful cord construction which connect poles in a simple manner, this architecture of wires, itself already beautiful in the day, turns into a spectacular beauty at nightfall. A simple, yet ingenious illumination, you just HAVE to see it fluttering ever so mesmerizingly in the wind.

ATARAXIA

ATARAXIA is an interactive light installation that brings people from the bustle of life into another dimension where they can breathe in the lights, find peace of mind and are removed from the stress of everyday life even just for a while.

HOME

Looking like a child's sketch straight out from a drawing book, the light installation represents an illusory image of an immediately recognizable home using light - right here in this urban jungle of ours.

SOCIAL SPARKLES

Walk among fireflies in a forest - a hundred individual lights are hang overhead, lighting up and sparkling as you walk underneath them, following you. And as soon as they appear, they disappear and the sky is dark again. Enchanting.

URCHIN

Urchin is inspired by sea urchins – the textured and permeable surfaces interacts with the light, while the mathematic repetition in the lace brings visual rhythm and harmony, and sets this delicate and nature form against the skyline of the city.

The Floating Platform & Esplanade

SECRET GALAXIES

For a celestial-inspired visual spectacle, look to the façade of the ArtScience Museum where its exterior walls get transformed into a giant canvas where a confluence of visual images based on the humanistic relationships with the night sky are projected.

HYBYCOZO

Taking these far-ranging influences, the artists have borrowed everything from ancient Islamic tiles to the patterns created by particle physicists when modelling the unified field theory to translate the appearance of beauty within naturally occurring harmonic relationships and patterns in the natural world into sculptural form.

THE BODY OF THE SEA

(Merlion Park)

Singaporeans will be familiar with the local lingo 'Merlion' (which means to vomit). But this light artwork gives it a new twist - using light- and water-based artwork, the Merlion gives the impression that it is 'sucking in' the waters of Marina Bay! The result? Successive waves of seawater give the Merlion a coral dress, a surreal skin of fish, shells and other marine creatures.

Remember I mentioned earlier about the three new festival hubs?

ART ZOO

(Ticketed)

Art-Zoo, a festival hub at The Float @ Marina Bay, will house 11 larger-than-life inflatable art installations in a giant play-garden. From plants, animals, to ecosystems that represent different letters of the alphabet, Art-Zoo explores nature through the perspective of art in an imaginative landscape.

From manoeuvring through a Giraffe maze to walking through the belly of a Whale or taking pictures with a towering Spider, this interactive and visual adventure promises great fun for the young and the young-at-heart while learning more about wildlife and creating a sustainable world.

Do note that Art Zoo is ticketed. Tickets are priced at $15 per person, and $50 (online) or $54 (onsite) for a package of 4 tickets. Children under 2 years old are allowed into the park without a ticket. Two children under two are complimentary with one full paying ticket.

Opening hours are from 5pm to 11pm on weekdays and 2pm to 11pm on weekends. For more information, visit artzoo.sg.

The Fantastical World of eco.me

(Free Admission)

The second festival hub, The Fantastical World of eco.me, will present a myriad of sustainability-themed activities at The Promontory @ Marina Bay. With highlights such as a recycling and upcycling marketplace, a kinetic energy playground and urban farming showcases, visitors can explore and discover something new about environmental sustainability at the hub over 2 weekends, from 3 to 5 March and 9 to 12 March 2017.

Gastrobeats

(Free Admission)

What's a festival without food and music? Visitors can patronise Gastrobeats – held at the Bayfront Event Space – to grab gastronomic delights from food artisans, as well as put on their dancing shoes for a night of Silent Disco where participants wear wireless noise-cancelling headphones to enjoy live-streamed music of their choice at the Marina Bay City Gallery.

Oh, and chancing upon some pretty fun and interactive light installations too!

Hope I didn't scare you. LOL.

And did I mention indulging in some old-school fun with carnival rides at Uncle Ringo Carnival?

Located at the Bayfront Event Space, the carnival is open every Sunday to Thursday, 5pm – 11pm and Friday & Saturday, 4pm – 12am.

Want MORE? There are plenty of other fringe activities that are suitable for the whole family too, including a Silent Disco event for kids (payable)! Check out the full programme listing at www.ilightmarinabay.sg.

For a more immersive experience, download the Blippar map and enjoy i Light Marina Bay in augmented reality. Access everything you need to make the most of your visit to i Light Marina Bay right from your smartphone  fom viewing the festival map to locating the restaurants around you with the best deals and promos. Download the Blippar app for free from the Apple store or Google Play. Visit HERE for more details.

Useful Information

i Light Marina Bay 2017

Dates: 3 to 26 March 2017

Time: 7.30pm to 11pm daily, with an extension to 12mn on Fridays and Saturdays

Venue: Marina Bay waterfront promenade

Admission: Free

Website: www.ilightmarinabay.sg