Every winter, visitors and residents alike get to see Amsterdam in a whole new light – literally – as large-scale light art installations add an extra layer of vibrance to the city. For the seventh annual edition, the Amsterdam Light Festival chose the theme “The Medium is the Message,” a modern-day evaluation of the famous phrase coined by Canadian scientist Marshall McLuhan. The role light plays in conveying a message glows in the foreground with Amsterdam as the stage, each work interacting with its setting.

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The festival asks artists to consider what kinds of messages light transmits in an era of technology, new media and “fake news.” Can light maintain its objectivity? How does it communicate in a way that other mediums simply can’t share? 29 works of art present their own answers to these questions, illuminated each day between 5pm and 11pm. The festival kicked off on November 29th, 2018 and will run through January 20th, 2019.

Among the most dynamic works is ‘Light a Wish’ by OGE group, which dangles rotating dandelions over the city’s canal.

“The enlarged, fuzzy seeds – of which there are 20 in total and measure 2 metres in height – dangle carefully above the canal and glow in a way that makes it look as though they are breathing. With ‘Light a Wish’ the artists visualise the good intentions that we quietly release and (hopefully) encounter again in the future. In this way the illuminated dandelion puffballs are carriers of our deepest desires and dreams.”

“In the old days, blowing dandelion seeds into the air was also done as a superstitious act: the number of seeds that remained signified the number of years you had to wait to get married, how many children you would have with your loved one, or how many years you still had to live. But before we can take a look in the future, we have to wait a little longer for spring.”

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If you’re a light artist interested in seeing your own work splashed across Amsterdam, the festival is already calling for concepts for the 2019-2020 season – check it out at the Amsterdam Light Festival website.

Photography by Janus van den Eijnden

Festivals rank high among humankind’s most cherished traditions but if you think these annual gatherings are all fun and games, you’d be VERY wrong.

The poster child for “dangerous festivals” has to be the legendary Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain. The annual nine-day-long celebration originated centuries ago and encompasses a wide variety of events, the most (in)famous of which being the Running of the Bulls – an exceptionally dangerous free-for-all that dates back to the 14th century.

Flickr members VaqueroFrancis and Nicholas Cole (ncole458) captured both the excitement and the danger of the San Fermin festival first-hand in July of 2017 and July of 2009, respectively. And that’s no bull.

Onbashira Festival, Japan

The Onbashira (“Honored Pillars”) Festival is held every 7 years in Japan’s Nagano Prefecture. The festival’s highlight features the felling of sixteen specially selected fir trees that are then hauled down a steep mountain slope.

The trimmed posts are then erected at the corners of four local shrines being renovated for the occasion but that’s not the dangerous part… participants “ride” the logs as they’re being transported down the mountainside and some (participants, not logs) don’t arrive in one piece. Flickr member Shibainu captured the goings-on at the previous festival in April of 2010.

Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake, UK

Follow that cheese wheel! The Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake has been held annually over the past 200 years in Brockworth, Gloucestershire, UK. The fact they included “Wake” in the title should give you a clue right off the bat that this is no ordinary festive occasion.

One former participant described the main event as “20 young men chasing a cheese off a cliff and tumbling 200 yards to the bottom, where they are scraped up by paramedics and packed off to hospital,” and he wasn’t exaggerating: in 1997, for example, 33 injuries were reported. Flickr member Will de Freistas (ninjawil) snapped some of the limb-snapping festivities in May of 2009.

Taiwan Lantern Festival

The culmination of the annual Taiwan Lantern Festival is the Tainan Yanshui Fireworks Display, also known as the “Beehive of Rockets”. Approximately 3 million bottle rockets are fired into crowds of revelers… what could possibly go wrong?

“Only the brave dare move so close to the rack of tens of thousands of bottle rockets at Yanshui Beehive Rockets Festival in Taiwan,” according to Flickr member Michael Dwyer. Hey, let’s not count out the drunk and the stupid!

Takanakuy, Peru

A Peruvian Fighting Festival, you say? Shut up and take our money! The festival of Tananakuy is held every Christmas Day in a number of villages and towns in southern Peru’s Chumbivilcas province. The word “tananakuy” means “to hit each other” in the local Quechua language, and that pretty much sums up the essence of this particular festival.

And the hits just keep on coming: men, woman and children are all eligible to put up their dukes, often while wearing colorful and elaborate costumes expressing themes of traditional local culture.

Other places may tout peace on Earth and goodwill towards men on December 25th; in the Andean highlands they prefer fighting as a way to show off one’s manhood (or womanhood, or… childhood?) and/or to settle old scores and grievances. Kinda like Festivus but without the metal pole or a screaming Frank Costanza. Flickr member Tang Tran Minh Thành took some in-your-face shots in January of 2014… that’s gotta hurt.

Kadri Kambala, India

Imagine if you will, a race between two pair of water buffaloes driven by whip-wielding, half-naked farmers through a muddy rice paddy. It may sound like the Twilight Zone (or, say, the chariot race scene from Ben Hur, sans the chariots) but it’s actually Kadri Kambala in Karnataka province, southwestern India.

The pairs of buffaloes are yoked together rather loosely and the farmers wear little in the way of protection – them beasts have got wicked horns! The race courses offer hazards of their own, including wandering spectators who should know not to get in the way of charging water buffaloes. Flickr member Karunakar Rayker (wildxplorer) captured the excitement of a full-blown Kadri Kambala festival in January of 2008.

National Pyrotechnic Festival, Mexico

Ain’t no fireworks festival like a Mexican fireworks festival, amiright? The annual National Pyrotechnic Festival (“Feria Nacional de la Pirotecnia”) was formally established in 1989 but traces its history back to celebrations in honor of John of God, the patron saint of fireworks makers. In related news, Mexican fireworks makers have their own patron saint.

The festival’s highlight is the “parade of toritos”, in which roughly 250 bull-shaped frameworks festooned with lit fireworks are marched down the main street of Tultepec, center of Mexico’s fireworks-manufacturing region. Think of the Running of the Bulls, but with flaming bulls… even Hemingway would cringe. Flickr member Tan Ya (arreguin.tania) snapped the shots above in March of 2014.

Kirkpinar, Turkey

You might not have heard of Kirkpinar but this annual oil-wrestling tournament and festival has been held near Edirne, Turkey, since 1346. Guinness World Records has officially recognized Kirkpinar as being the world’s longest-running sports tournament.

In Kirkpinar, wrestlers wearing only short leather pants battle one-on-one outdoors in an open field, dousing themselves with olive oil before each bout. Geez guys, get a grip… oh. Anyway, the bouts have been time-limited since 1975 – in previous years, bouts would sometimes last up to two days, running from 9am to dusk. Flickr member Charles Roffey (CharlesFred) got up close and personal with some of the oil-wrestlers during a trip to Edirne in July of 2011.

Calgary Stampede, Canada

The Calgary Stampede in Calgary, Alberta, began in 1886 as an annual agricultural. Rodeo events were added in 1912 and the first chuckwagon races were run in 1923. The format can be extremely hazardous for man and beast: five human fatalities occurred between 1948 and 1999, and 65 horses have perished between 1986 and 2015.

These fatalities plus an uncounted number of injuries have made the Calgary Stampede’s chuckwagon races the focus of controversy, though there’s no doubt the possibility of life-threatening havoc has a certain appeal to the public. Flickr member Randy Peters captured the fear, drama and excitement of a Calgary Stampede chuckwagon race in July of 2006.

Holy Week Celebrations, the Philippines

Holy Week celebrations in the Philippines are notorious for the extreme acts of devotion practiced by those seeking to emulate the suffering – even to the point of actual crucifixion – endured by Jesus Christ. Though the modern Catholic Church discourages the more exceptional examples of penance such as self-flagellation, painfully graphic Good Friday events continue to be staged for public view. Stop hammer time… NOT.

Flickr member istolethetv attended the Good Friday celebrations in Bacalor, Central Luzon, on April 21st of 2011. In the image above, Ruben “Mang Ben Kristo” Enaje is shown undergoing his 32nd crucifixion since 1985. The Filipino carpenter, sign painter, and ex-construction worker began participating in these all-too-real reenactments after unexpectedly surviving a bad fall from an unfinished building. One wonders, who does his nails?

Best known for his vivid geometric murals full of fantastical animals, which brighten up everything from derelict churches to fleets of freighters, street artist Okuda San Miguel has crafted a massive 3D sculptural centerpiece for the annual Fallas celebration in Valencia, Spain. The 100-foot-tall cardboard sculpture stood for just four days before it was ritualistically burned, along with the rest of the art created for the festival, in a celebration of ephemeral human achievements.

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The festival, honoring Saint Joseph, sees three million visitors descend upon a city of one million to dance, celebrate the beginning of Spring, drink sangria in the streets and watch a bunch of things burn. Among the sculptural ‘sacrifices’ are traditionally a series of giant ‘ninots’ (puppets or dolls) including satirical figures. This year, it was Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. Just before midnight on ‘La Crema,’ the last day of the festival, the crowds begin changing and the streetlights are turned off before fireworks explode and everything is set ablaze.

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Asked by El Periodico before the festival whether he was ready to see the piece burn, Okuda said, “No I’m not. I think I’m going to have a sentimental craze, because it’s the most amazing piece I’ve done in 3D and I’m freaking out with every piece that comes out. I’m going to cry. With the cool thing that we have built, I’m sure I will not understand very well that it’s going to burn, but I think the millions of people who are around this and who have such a strong feeling will make me understand.”

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“This is one of the great traditional festivals of Spain because, to start, it’s art, it’s not just bulls running and I do not know what. Fallas are constructions that artisans make for a year and with a history of more than a century. I find it incredible.”

When planning out world travel, one typically dwells on destinations more than times, but some of the best sights can only been seen at a particular point in the day or, in the case of these marvels, at night.

WebUrbanist is pleased to announce a new partnership with Google Field Trip, bringing some of our best and brightest travel articles to their mobile platform, allowing you to find hidden wonders of the world wherever (and whenever) you may be. In this article, we have teamed up to highlight seven amazing places to visit by night, each offering special surprises to the nocturnally inclined.

World’s Largest Urban Bat Colony in Austin, Texas

At dusk, people flock to watch the emergence of 1.5 million bats from beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge, designed and built in 1980 in a way that inadvertantly turned out to provide an ideal roost for a particular breed of flying nocturnal predators.

Often under-appreciated or even feared, these night flyers consume between 10,000 and 20,000 pounds of food each evening, helping them earn their keep. Today, there is even a dedicated Statesman Bat Observation Center from which visitors are encouraged to experience the spectacle.

World’s Largest Ice & Snow Festival in Harbin, China

By far the biggest such event in the world, the Harbin International Ice & Snow Sculpture Festival consists of huge works of art and architecture that truly come into their own once the sun sets and glowing lights behind and within bricks of ice come to life.

Using swing saws to cut ice directly from an adjacent river, artists then turn the frozen building blocks into human, animal and mythical figures as well as huge staircases and structures. Among other honors and awards, a snow sculpture featured at the festival holds the world’s record for size at 750 feet by 28 feet (13,000 cubic meters of snow). Other similarly-impressive global ice festivals can be found in Japan, Canada and Norway as well.

Synchronous Firefly Swarms near Knoxville, Tennessee

Fireflies can be a wonderful sight regardless of the species, but one rare type in particular (Photinus Carolinus), is even more special than its cousins: the so-called Synchronous Firefly swarms light up in unison, pulsing every few seconds at the exact same time.

At Great Smoky Mountains National Park, viewers can buy tickets in advance and be taken by shuttle to special viewing areas from which to observe these lightning bugs. Within the park, 18 other species of firefly can also be found, but only one whose constituents almost all flash simultaneously.

Ghost Ship Water Hologram in Amsterdam, Holland

A maritime marvel in more ways than one, this 3D optical illusion involves two intersecting planar projections beamed onto perpendicular planes of vertical water.

Created for the Amsterdam Light Festival by VisualSkin, the resulting real-life rendering looks like a 17th-century seafaring vessel seemingly held in stasis and composed of water and light. The effect, naturally, works best at night, turning a fountain by day into a marvelously surprising evening display.

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Nocturnal Field Trips 7 World Wonders Best Explored At Night

At the top of a mountain, a crumbling Yellow Brick Road winds around forests filled with creepy anthropomorphic trees, Dorothy’s dilapidated house and an Emerald Castle made of stone. The Land of Oz has been abandoned for thirty-three years, and it hasn’t seen much restoration during that time, but it opens to the public October 5th for an annual event called ‘Autumn at Oz,’ enabling visitors to see it in all its sad, derelict glory for a few of Halloween season.

(images via: rockinfree)

Located at Beech Mountain, a ski resort in Western North Carolina, the Land of Oz saw over 20,000 visitors on its opening day in 1970. A ski lift was modified to resemble a balloon ride, taking guests on an aerial tour of the park with views of the mountain scenery. The park design was based on the book rather than the film, and the visitor was intended to experience it from Dorothy’s point of view.

(images via: rockinfree)

Despite a 1975 fire that destroyed some artifacts, including the dress worn by Judy Garland in the movie, the Land of Oz was fully operational until 1980. Once it was closed, many items were stolen, vandalized or destroyed, and those that weren’t were given over to the elements. A few pieces remain in storage at Appalachian State University.

(images via: emerald mountain)

The park was partially restored in 1990, and Former employees started Autumn at Oz as a reunion three years later. Now it’s an annual event, opening the doors to the outside world just two days every year. Proceeds from the event go to the (apparently minimal) upkeep of the park.