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

Rippling, unfolding, slithering and glowing like bioluminescent creatures, these kinetic and illuminated works of art are mesmerizing to watch. We can’t help being fascinated by the combination of light and motion, especially when it’s integrated into clothing, responds to our gaze or voices, or is engineered into monumental interactive installations of laser beams for our slack-jawed amusement.

Sound Activated Clothing by Ying Gao

‘Incertitudes’ and ‘(NO)Where (NOW)here’ by fashion designer Ying Gao are two series of unusual reactive garments – the former covered in rippling dressmaker pins, and the latter moving like a living creature while glowing eerily in the dark. The photo luminescent thread works with eye tracking technology to activate movement by the gaze of spectators, while the pins respond to spectators’ voices.

Experimental Kinetic Glass Installations by LASVIT

Czech lighting company LASVIT presents a series of experimental kinetic glass installations during Milan Design Week, creating immersive illuminated environments that move and shift in synchronized rhythms.

La Vie en Rose by Atelier Öi & USM

A company called USM produces a network of industrial components known as USM Haller Systems that offer infinite reuse and reconfiguration possibilities. For Designer’s Saturday 2014 in Switzerland, the company commissioned Atelier Öi to use these parts as a base for a kinetic art installation expressing these possibilities. ‘La Vie en Rose’ is the result.

CL:OC Installation by GROSSE 8

Hanging flurorescent tubes powered by twenty-eight motors hang in the air, constantly rearranging themselves to display the time in digital numbers. Created by German design collective GROSSE 8, the sculpture debuted at Interior Design Week Cologne.

Big Dipper: Helical Kinetic Sculpture by Michael Candy

Looming in the air like some kind of monstrous mechanical spider, BIG DIPPER by Michael Candy is suspended within an old warehouse in India, just waiting to scare the pants off a passerby. It features 18 fluorescent tubes sticking out of a plywood and metal body.

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Living Light 11 Transforming Kinetic Illuminated Art Installations

Phosphorescent paints, pigments and pebbles that charge via sunlight by day and glow after dark transform the nighttime urban landscape, illuminating murals, bike paths, skate parks, rivers and even live snails. It’s like taking the glow-in-the-dark stickers you plastered all over everything as a kid out into the real world and achieving similar effects on a satisfyingly large scale, hiding secrets all over the city that will be revealed when the sun goes down.

3 Glow-in-the-Dark Street Art Murals by Reskate

When the sun goes down, hand puppets, knives and space helmets appear within a rabbit, a planet and a loaf of bread. Spanish creative studio Reskate used glow-in-the-dark paint to hide these unexpected figures within their silhouetted murals.

Glow in the Dark Bike Path in the Netherlands

This bike path is safer after dark thanks to small particles of phosphor called ‘luminosphores’ that charge up during the day and release light at night. Urban planners in Lidzbark Warminski, Poland took inspiration from a similar project by Studio Roosegaarde in the Netherlands, but wanted to use a zero-energy light source instead of solar-powered LEDs.

Phosphorescent Mural by SpY, Paris

Blending into the pale brick on the side of a Paris building by day, this mural by SpY reveals its secrets at night, blaring ‘I AM NOT A REAL ARTIST.’

Snail Swarm Enhanced with LED Lights & UV Paint

Researching snails can be kind of dry, so a group of researchers from the Ecology department at the University of Exeter found a more fun – and visually dazzling – way to go about it. The team tagged hundreds of live snails with LED lights and UV paint, and then tracked their patterns of movement at night. The experiment is an effort to track how snails spread lungworm to dogs.

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Glow In The Dark Outdoor Art 15 Designs That Come Alive At Night

Imbued with a sense of reverence, not to mention all those beautifully vaulted spaces, cathedrals and other sacred spaces can be stunning settings for art installations of all kinds, from ethereal light projections to complex arrangements of string. Abandoned churches get the revival of a lifetime when painted floor-to-cupola with vivid murals, while the ruins of long-lost cathedrals are resurrected in ghostly wire forms.

‘Our Colour Reflection’ by Liz West, UK

Hundreds of mirrored discs in a spectrum of colors hover above the floor of England’s former St. John’s Church in Scunthorpe, reflecting rainbow light all over the interior. The installation by Liz West is gorgeous when taking it in as a whole, but step closer and you’ll see that each disc is like a miniature work of art in itself, containing its own tiny composition of architectural elements.

Ghost Church Made of Wire by Edoardo Tresoldi, Italy

A long-lost early Christian basilica is resurrected in ghostly form, its contours traced in wire for a translucent effect. Located in the historic park of Siponto in the Southern Italian region of Puglia, this installation by Edoardo Tresoldi lets modern-day visitors explore the church as it is thought to have appeared centuries ago.

Video Mapping by Marcos Zotes, Iceland

Artist and architect Marcos Zotes uses the facade of Hallgrímskirkja, Iceland’s largest church, as a canvas for projections of monumental proportions in a show called ‘Rafmognu? Náttúra.’ Moderating the color and movement through a midi controller, the artist created a dynamic visual experience that made the architecture seem to come alive.

11 Mirages to Freedom by Okuda San Miguel, Morocco

An abandoned and dilapidated church gets a striking makeover with the addition of a vivid mural covering nearly all of its exterior surfaces. Street artist Okuda San Miguel painted ’11 Mirages to Freedom’ on the outside of this church in Morrocco as an interactive display honoring its past as well as its structural beauty.

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Holy Art 13 Spectacular Secular Installations In Sacred Spaces

Deep within the cooling and storage cellars of the former Linden brewery in the German city of Unna, darkened tunnels house the eerily glowing exhibitions of the world’s first and only light art museum. Established in 2001, the Centre for International Light Art is home to eleven sprawling installations within its 8,200 square feet, including Olafur Eliasson’s The Reflective Corridor, a 33-foot-high waterfall of light. Each was created specifically for this unique subterranean space.

Director John Jaspers describes the featured artists, including James Turrell and Joseph Kosuth, as “the Rembrandts and van Goghs of light art.” Their creations range from Keith Sonnier’s light graffiti rendered palpable in three-dimensional space via neon tubes, entitled ‘Tunnel of Tears,’ to Turrell’s surreal oculus entitled ‘Third Breath.’

Each exhibit interacts with the stark, aging surfaces within the 167-year-old complex, which was formerly just one of many industrial ruins found within Germany’s coal center. The little-known museum attracts only about 25,000 visitors per year, owing partially to the fact that local laws require limited-capacity guided tours due to emergency evacuation concerns.

That could change as the museum gains more recognition internationally, especially with its first annual international Light Art Award competition, which aims to promote artists working in the field of light art. It’s located about three hours outside Berlin. Take a virtual tour at the Centre for International Light Art Unna website.