Illuminus Art Festival Lights up Boston
Colorful lights, a cornucopia of sounds and a crowd of people flooded Landsdowne Street near Fenway Park last Saturday during the contemporary art festival Illuminus, or “Night of Lights.”
The event, which took place in and around Boston from Oct. 10 to Oct. 13, was part of Hubweek, which aimed to celebrate the work, art and creative thinking that the city has fostered.
Illuminus focused on the abstract in a convergence of visual and performance art, sound and technology. Although this was only its second annual event, the festival attracted a crowd of around 30,000 people and featured 30 art installations, ranging from a tin foil hat exhibit to a procession of robotic puppet effigies.
It was this variety of abstract and interactive exhibits that caught the attention of one of Exeter’s own art clubs, Democracy of Sound (DoS). According to co-head and senior Annie Ning, “the projects were everything—fluorescent, melodious and sometimes unsettling.” She described the event as a visually and sonically brilliant experience that resembled a thought-provoking playground of art.
Similarly, upper Meghan Chou noted the high energy of the festival. She described it as the perfect break from the stress of Exeter as well as a great learning experience in terms of finding inspiration for art.
“Since all of the exhibits were happening at the same time, there were flashing lights and loud speakers everywhere,” she said. “We saw great examples of how to produce art on a large scale using the environment as your canvas and working with what you have in front of you.”
“Waking the Monster,” one of the most popular exhibits of the event, did just this: the drumming group stood in the rafters of Fenway Park, turning the iconic green monster into a musical instrument as they stroked its metal exoskeleton in a variety of catchy beats, accompanied by elaborate visual effects.
Music instructor Jon Sakata also hosted his own exhibit at the festival, titled “lifeSOURCE.” It consisted of a series of suspended net “reeds,” which aimed to represent the location of Boston 200 years ago before the years of construction and industrialization. The exhibit featured video projections of environmental scenes and people in urban settings that changed in hue, in addition to a naturistic soundtrack.
Sakata collaborated on the booth with architect Rob Trumbour. The two were excited to see groups of people enjoying their exhibit and using it to foster their own creativity.
“Rob and I were blown away with how people of all ages—individually and in groups—played, danced, took what must have been thousands of selfies, in each of the net tubes,” Sakata said. “It was simply a humbling and inspiring experience to see the imagination of each festival goer and how they created for themselves an experience and scenario as they lost themselves in the reeds.”
Despite the positive reports of most students and faculty, there were still a couple who were left disappointed. Senior Zanny Merullo went to the event looking for inspiration, but found the event was drastically different from what she had expected. She also noted a lot of it seemed too high concept for her to fully understand it.
“It did not live up to my expectations,” she said. “There were some things that took me by surprise, but in general I thought it was going to be more of a traditional art fair, rather than interactive art. A lot of it was just very high concept stuff, some which was well executed, but others that were not.”
However, according to prep Jack Stewart, the majority of the group who attended seemed thrilled to be there.
“We all really enjoyed it,” he said. “It was just unique and fun. The art was really abstract and different from typical art in a cool way. We were constantly surrounded by other people who also appreciate this kind of stuff, which added to the excitement.”
According to Sakata, the event was a perfect fit for DoS, since the collaborative work of the club to bring together art, technology and community-building serves a close resemblance to the goals of Illuminus. He hopes that members of DoS found inspiration in the event and will learn something from it in addition to having a great time.
“We can learn and experience so much by working together in the process of driving excellence and wonder to new dimensions,” he said. “I hope the DoS members found not only inspiration but also empowerment and agency that what they aspire for here is connected to what is happening elsewhere, in this magical case, in Boston.”