We’ve already pre­viewed the LUX fes­ti­val, but now we’re a bit over halfway through and the weath­er’s look­ing kind, it’s worth remind­ing you to See. It. Now. You have until Sun­day.

nZwarm at LUX

We had a wan­der around last night, and the atmos­phere was (appro­pri­ate­ly) elec­tric. Quite apart from the instal­la­tions them­selves, the expe­ri­ence of being around so many peo­ple enjoy­ing Welling­ton’s streets, lanes and water­front on a win­ter night was delight­ful. Some might ques­tion the wis­dom of com­bin­ing sound-acti­vat­ed art works with hordes of excitable chil­dren (my ears are still ring­ing), but in gen­er­al the cheer­ful crowds with their phone cam­eras and DSLRs were an attrac­tion in them­selves.

There’s so much vari­ety that it’s hard to pick favourites, and to prop­er­ly expe­ri­ence every­thing would take sev­er­al vis­its. How­ev­er, some of the must-sees for me were:

  • Potion For­est, a qui­et­ly mag­i­cal work that would ben­e­fit from a lit­tle more wind to get things sway­ing
  • Light Rails, which makes the most of the con­strained space in Opera House Lane, and makes you do a dou­ble-take when you realise it’s not a pro­jec­tion
  • Te Aho ō tātou Tupuna, which takes John­son Wite­hi­ra’s Courte­nay Place light­box instal­la­tion to new heights (lit­er­al­ly)
  • #entity.255, an effec­tive piece of dig­i­tal media inter­ac­tion that lets users search the web for images (pre­sum­ably with safe search turned on) and turns them into giant, gen­tly ani­mat­ed man­dalas
  • DAYDREAM V.2, a dev­as­tat­ing­ly sim­ple approach to tak­ing pro­jec­tions into the third dimen­sion (this video shows just a tiny frac­tion of its effects)

Some of the oth­er works were a touch too sub­tle besides such bold and bright com­pe­ti­tion, but the two per­ma­nent instal­la­tions (The Chan­de­lier and the Hiki­tia) should come into their own in their every­day con­texts. Oth­ers depend­ed very much on the angle and dis­tance of view­ing, so make sure you keep walk­ing around to get the most out of them.

Tim’s already men­tioned the deLux din­ing and food trucks, but the route also pass­es sev­er­al bars and cafés. I can hearti­ly rec­om­mend Bin 44, Crum­pet and Gold­ing’s Free Dive for fine drinks and nib­bles along the way.