Worlds of Light

 High Tech Near Home

As we travel, we love to find special displays, performances, and events that connect us to that locale. Recently we’ve found a very special event right here near our home on California’s Central Coast: the Field of Light. This installation of LED-powered light-bulb-sized spheres covers several tens of acres of gently rolling hills. The globes are about waist high, spaced a foot or so apart, and feel powerfully organic as they bob and sway in the gentle wind. While evenly spaced over the hills, the globes are organized around light emitters, each emitter lighting perhaps a hundred globes via fine fiber optic cables. Each emitter, and its many connected globes, change and shift color independently over the course of several minutes, providing constantly shifting rivers and paths of light.

In the words of the web site: "Field of Light at Sensorio [the official name] is comprised of an array of over 58,800 stemmed spheres lit by fiber-optics, gently illuminating the landscape in subtle blooms of morphing color that describe the undulating landscape."

Arriving just after sunset we caught the glow of the evening sky

The central light sources seemed like ganglion, with nerve fibers radiating out to the light globes

We spent over an hour wandering hill and dale, marveling at the beauty (and technology!) and sipping our wine. There was live music, a group playing Celtic tunes near the entrance. which we could hear even from the furthest reaches of the installation. Eventually the paths, marked by their complete absence of light, took us back to our starting point. We ended the evening contemplating the vast display while we ate a fine Mexican dinner (a delight we have yet to find in Europe!).

Truly a memorable experience!

For more information about this extraordinary installation near Paso Robles, CA, check the web site:

             https://www.sensoriopaso.com/

Van Gogh in the Quarry

The lights in the fields near Paso Robles reminded us of another artistic experience we had shortly before leaving France. We spent a couple of weeks traveling with Paula’s brother and his wife, Mark and Brenda, last June. One of the many places we visited was Les Baux-de-Provance, a medieval village not far from Arles in the South of France. Paula and I had been there a decade or two ago, and I remember being impressed with their recreation of a trebuchet, a Medieval siege engine.  It is quite a picturesque place, and one of the 100 or so Plus Beaux Villages (Most Beautiful Villages) of France. But its beauty was upstaged—for us, at least—by a relatively new art installation:  Carrières de Lumières (literally, Careers of Lights).

The ruins of Les Baux

Les Baux has been used as a quarry at least since Roman times, and probably long before. Of course, many of the quarries have been abandoned sometime in the last 1000 years or so. One quarry that has seen little use since the 1930s is now the site of an eye-popping, mind-boggling multi-media display.

The quarry with the lights on

The quarry is a vast underground space with walls some 30 or 40 feet high, divided by massive pillars from which the huge stone blocks were carved. Images are projected on the walls and floors. The projectors are coordinated in such a way that the pictures move across the walls, around corners, into and through side passages in a seamless steady flow, accompanied by a custom soundtrack. And what pictures! While we were there it featured Japanese prints and—the big draw—van Gogh. Seeing Vincent’s characters and images sliding and pulsating to the music was truly an astonishing experience!

I'm turning Japanese! 

Classic Japanese themes, waving and undulating on the walls.

Amazing! But not the Main Event...

No one does yellow like Vincent...

The observers merge with the art... which is, after all, the point!

Vincent did well with his violets, too.

A particularly memorable moment for me was watching the vibrant colors of van Gogh’s sunflowers burst from the walls 100 times life sized, accompanied by the wail of Janis Joplin. I didn’t recognize the song, but her voice is unmistakable. The juxtaposition of these two artists, born a century apart and working in very different media, but sharing similar tortured and misunderstood lives, was a moving experience that remains with me still.

You want sunflowers?

We will be back in France in October, and shall certainly return to Les Baux for whatever show they’ve got!

More information--and some fantastic videos--about this powerful and moving exhibit can be found here:

https://www.carrieres-lumieres.com/en

PS:  We've got our tickets in hand and will be flying to Toulouse, France, on October 8. We'll take the train to Montpellier and settle in there for a while. Because, also in hand, are our passports with our long-stay visas for France! We are now able to stay in France for one full year, without having to leave every 90 days.

We'll be posting more blogs on our experience in the coming year, fer sure!