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.