Llum BCN

    Llum BCN is a leading lighting arts festival in Europe and a cultural event highly appreciated by the citizens of Barcelona. Organized by Barcelona City Council, Llum BCN brings together interventions by creators from all areas of the visual arts, including contemporary art, design, architecture, technology and lighting design.

    During the three-day festival, the Poblenou neighborhood and the surroundings of Plaça de les Glòries became a focal point for the city’s cultural activities. Over 220,000 people enjoyed the lighting installations designed by internationally renowned artists, along with projects from the city’s top architecture and design schools.

    The next celebration  will be on 2, 3 and 4 February 2024.

    Llum BCN is  back! See you there!

    The image of Llum BCN 2024 is a creation by the designer Àlex Gifreu (Menorca, 1971). The design suggests a set of lighting effects based on chromatic contrasts, color gradients, letter profiles, among others, to simulate the graphic representation of light. The result is a creativity that achieves optical effects and a different visual perception depending on the reading distance and the size of each medium. It is based on the use of typography as the main element, with compositions and a chromatic range of very bright colors, almost fluorescent.

    United Visual Artists at Llum BCN 2024

    The British studio United Visual Artists (UVA) is slated to present Patterns and Recognitions. A composition in three parts by United Visual Artists within the framework of Llum BCN 2024. It will be housed at the Disseny Hub Barcelona (Dhub) and can be viewed outside the festival dates. The show will stay open as a temporary exhibition in the centre’s Room A until 17 March. 

    United Visual Artists (UVA), a studio founded by the artist Matt Clark in London in 2003, presents works integrating new technologies and traditional media like sculpture and performance and exploring the conceptual frameworks and natural phenomena that shape our cognition.

    Curated by José Luis de Vicente and Maria Güell, and with the official sponsorship of Integrated Systems Europe (ISE), the installation Patterns and Recognitions. A Three-Part Composition comprising three installations: Silent Symphony, Vanishing Point and Present Shock. 

     

    Sylent Symphony

    Inspired by Ancient Greek philosophers’ belief that the universe produced an inaudible kind of music, Silent Symphony traces resonant frequencies and synchronicities occurring at the cosmic scale and explores how they relate to our sense of harmony.

    Eight custom kinetic sculptures cast rotating planes of light and sound across the room. Oscillating between order and chaos, the beams of light slice through space, creating complex patterns and interactions with the architecture. The work physicalises invisible energetic forces, such as gravity, giving them form as light and sound. The installation, which unfolds as a performance, is a dynamic, constantly evolving interplay of elements that never repeats.

     

    Vanishing Point

    This installation employs perspective as a tool to reshape and redefine a space, continuing UVA’s explorations into programmable architecture and creating the illusion of light as a physical material. Vanishing Point was inspired by Renaissance perspective drawings by Leon Battista Alberti, Leonardo Da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer.

    Beams of white light are projected into space from an invisible vanishing point, drawing different geometries, compositions and divisions within the room and transforming our sense of perspective. The work’s behaviour is unpredictable and without repetition, fluctuating between states where the beams glide calmly to more energetic movements.

    The functional, architectural quality of the three-dimensional sound field augments the structural light compositions.  The speed, position and angle of the lines influence the tone of the sound.

     

    Present Shock

    Present Shock confronts the viewer with a barrage of statistical clocks representing real-time information about the world—from life-changing global events to the banal trivia of everyday existence—highlighting how the speed and volume of data in the Information Age present new challenges to our limited cognitive apparatus.

    Many of the statistics presented occur at timescales and spatial horizons that similarly defy our perception or comprehension. Disturbing the inertia of the here and now, they reveal the fluctuating state of dynamic transformation that characterises life on Earth.

    Highlights

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