The 2019 festival’s event route took visitors through Eindhoven’s city centre via each specially-curated light installation. It also saw multiple original artworks from GLOWlabs for the first time. GLOWlabs are creative sessions in which companies, artists, technicians, designers, institutions and residents worked together on a certain theme to create an innovative light-artwork, with the idea to have as many projects as possible made in Eindhoven.
For the 2019 edition, Signify, ASML, GXE and Weschap De Dommel, amongst others, provided an intrinsic contribution in collaboration with Eindhoven designers and students.
GLOWlab installation PING, by Gijs van Bon and ASML, was a wireless network, which incorporated 250 linked beacons, creating an intelligent system through which information could flow. The information was transferred between each beacon with light and sound.
The project The Light Cathedral by Ellen de Cries was one of this year’s ‘try-outs’ on the sidelines of GLOW’s route. In a shop on the Nieuwe Emmasingel, the brainwave activity of a wide target group was measured during a virtual reality experience in a fictitious cathedral. During the exploratory study, researchers played with the influence and power of light on health in public spaces. They researched the effects of light colour, form and light distribution.
Together, with its founders Signify and the municipality of Eindhoven, this edition’s GLOW festival took further steps to ensure sustainability was factored into the annual event.
Following Colour Symphony, a piece of projection artwork on the Witte Dame, Signify and artists from the festival created a six-minute audio interval titled Light is life. It was a story of light, where a grandfather tells the grandson about light, darkness and sustainability and acted as an appeal to visitors of GLOW to be more economical with lighting.
Director Ramakers commented: “We are not focusing on growth, but on balance. GLOW wants to become energy-neutral, but also combat waste in a broader sense, with the focus on recycling. We are looking at how Eindhoven companies can save energy for GLOW throughout the year, for example by switching off lights a minute earlier. More importantly, this is a statement that raises awareness. Fortunately, more and more light art works employ LED light, which is much more energy-efficient than incandescent lamps. Light beacons used for previous editions will be reused differently next time. This is an integral part of our constant search for innovation and balance, without this becoming a bore.”
