The New York Festival of Light (NYFOL), a non-profit art organization whose mission is to bring to New York City, the beauty and wonder of lighting design, is launching a year-long initiative that will culminate in the city’s first annual lighting festival to be held in November of 2014.
A special preview, dubbed “First Light,” of what will be on view tomorrow (Thursday) during a celebration at the Elizabeth Street Garden in NoLiTa from 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.
NYFOL is the brainchild of Ira Levy, an award-winning New York City-based lighting designer, and Liam O’Braion, a producer of large-scale entertainment events. The two have long admired the annual lighting festivals that take place worldwide in cities such as Berlin, London, Lyon, Montreal, and Sydney.
The New York project, which has garnered the support from the lighting industry, is gaining momentum and the idea behind ‘First Light’ is to give the producers an opportunity show the public a “taste” of the lighting extravaganza the likes of which New York has yet to see.
“The festival is a celebration of light, in all of its extraordinary incarnations, ranging from static, interactive, and projection, to the ways artists, dancers, designers, musicians, and technologists collaborate with light to make their performances a delight for the senses,” said O’Braion.
Some of today’s leading fine and performing artists working with light are appearing at ‘First Light’ and include iLuminate, which uses light suit design and control to enable performers to dazzle audiences; 3_Search, a group at the intersection of fine arts, science, and technology; Nancy Burson, an artist/photographer acclaimed for her pioneering work in morphing technologies; Scott Chmielewski of Digital Media Designs, known for their work at the Summer Olympics in Beijing’s Bird’s Nest; Okamoto Studio, an artist collective known for their design and production of sculptures out of crystal clear ice.
“With its historic monuments, the Elizabeth Street Garden provides rich texture for lighting and is an ideal canvas for our preview performance,” said Levy. “It’s a great site to show how lighting design enhances the city’s architecture and magically changes the city’s nightscape.”
