More Winter Lights

Remember when I went to the Winter Lights show in Canary Wharf last month? It's an annual event featuring artworks that use light (and often sound) in innovative ways, perfect for our dark winter months.

Well, while researching that show, I saw that a Winter Lights event was also planned for the redeveloped Battersea Power Station, now a massive housing complex and shopping center. I put that on my agenda too, and I've been meaning to go for weeks, but life kept intervening -- work stuff, our trip to California, Dave's surgery, et cetera.

Last Sunday was its final day, so that evening -- even though I'd already walked Olga around Hampstead Heath, and even though the weather forecast called for rain -- I decided to hop on the tube and go down and see it.

It was smaller than the Canary Wharf event, and thus easier to take in. I believe there were seven featured works, including "Butterfly Effect" (top) and "Large Diamond" (above).

I also came across a troupe of women wearing roller skates and spinning colorful lit-up hoops. They aren't listed in the program so I have no idea who they are or what their group is called, but they were fun to watch too.

Still photos don't do any of this justice. "Large Diamond," for example, has a beautiful shimmering effect that reflects on surrounding surfaces, kind of like a disco ball but more subtle. The lighting on all the artworks fluctuates and changes, and some of them include elements of sound as well. So here's a four-minute video:

Artworks depicted, in order:
1. "Singularity" by Squidsoup 

2. "Butterfly Effect" by Masamichi Shimada 

3. "Lightpiano 1.5" by Arion de Munck & Mark Ridder 

4. "Lightbattle III" by Venividimultiplex 

5. "C/C" by Angela Chong 

6. Entertainers with glowing rings and skates 

7. "Large Diamond" by Studio Freerk Wilbers

Watch for the moment when I'm backing away from "Singularity" (and thus having trouble holding my phone straight) and the exterior lights of the power station come on. I was lucky to catch that.

You'll notice I left ambient sound in the segment for "Lightpiano" (for obvious reasons) but put music over the rest of the video. That's because my videos were so darn noisy. I didn't want to subject you to the sound of the wind and kids yelling and passers-by nattering about whether or not to stop in to M&S to buy some beans. "Singularity" had a musical element as well but you couldn't really hear it, so hopefully this copyright-free music from iMovie is a worthy substitute!