i-Lights is a night time display and interactive illuminated exhibition focusing on arts with lights. This year’s installment sees the return of the night exhibition after a 2 year hiatus due to the pandemic. Let’s check out the i-Lights Marina Bay 2022 street light-up with a walkthrough.
Moreover, the temporary street art event typically runs in the middle of the year. The last time we visited the event on 2018. Furthermore, just like the last i-Lights, the exhibitions this year are dotted with independent exhibits encircling the Marina bay reservoir area. You can find exhibits sited from the art science museum running all the way to the downtown Marina Boulevard area. The displays tend to have an subtle activist message, which generally revolves about freedom and care for the environment.
Projections and whales by the Sands
Moreover, a recommended route to see all the exhibits involves starting off from the Youth Olympics games park by the Marina bay floating platform. Here you can see your first exhibition from the helix bridge named Motherearth climate change Data sculpture by OUCHH (from Turkey). The display involves a looping AI-generated animated projection on the Art Science Museum “lotus” building facade. Notably, projections are made from the floating platform across the marina reservoir.
Moving onto the Marina Bay Sands side past the Helix bridge, is the Plastic whale display (Singapore/China). It sits beside the Marina Bay sands lightshow open seating area in front of the mall’s main entrance. Also, if you are sharp, you can spot bits of plastic trash inside the whale. It is a notable nod and environmental shout-out to our garage problem in the oceans.
Balance on the Marina bay broadwalk
An interactive item is Here and There by Eiji (Japan). It is a mechanical See-saw is located on the western entrance of the Marina Bay Sands shoppes. It is located at the mall exit near the Black tap Burger joint we checked out previously in the area.
The mechanical contraption is a large UFO-like platform which pivots at the center like a giant circular see-saw. When loaded with occupants, the lights located in the outer rim of the UFO lights up when occupants tilt the platform or keep the balance beam perfectly flat and stable.
Furthermore, a peculiar wall of plastic bags called Ruffled Ice (by DP Singapore) sits by outside the red dot museum. Other interactive elements also include a glow-in-the-dark sketch wall (Light Canvas) which you can draw and sketch in using a light source. It is a photo reactive surface synonymous to glow in the dark which retains a glow after being exposed to light. Apparently, it does not require any power to operate either.
Moreover, this Boardwalk area here has some multiple coloured backlit artworks called Waste Not, Want not (Singapore) and Eyes of the Sea (Singapore). Notably, i-Lights also runs a paid event area called the Light wave experience by Oppo.
The Lightwave: Isle of light (Oppo) is a small floating dance floor built on a barge on the Marina bay. For a fee of $10/pax on Fridays and Saturdays (and $8 on weekdays), you can enter a floating event area. Also, there is also a floating dance floor barge which you can get onboard with the fee, though it is not an essential item to visit.
Promontory displays
Also, the promontory area is a vast display grounds home to a couple of out-of-this-world displays. One is a sea of dancing “antenna lights” Called and a bay-side lit spire known as the Shish-Ka-buoy (from New Zealand).
Moreover, the Firefly field display in particular is pretty memorizing, it’s like alien dancing lights sticking out of the ground waving in the rain, tad like an angler fish glowing antenna. The lights are individually dug in with the power source underground and synced.
Additionally, the Collective Memory (Litewerkz Singapore) is a display of reflective CDs suspended in the air using fishing nets. The display is hung under the sheltered fan shade by the downtown promontory area. Running Keep in moving (Serbia).
Furthermore, another interactive projection exhibit is “Alone together” (Singapore, USA). Projected are people on rectangular grids on one of the downtown MRT station entrance walls. To interact, you need to scan a QR code to invoke an applause sound and animation reaction in the projected screen.
Lights along Clifford pier
Finds here includes “Run and Keep on moving” by Ivana Jelic (Serbia) and Fallen (South Korea) is a domed free standing structure, which takes a tale out of Buckminster Fuller domed structural designs, like that we learnt at the Radical Curiosity Art science museum. It is lit in a range of glowing blue and pink lights which contrast the dark surrounds. You can also find a random food truck stationed here for quick bites too.
Moreover, by the downtown area going clockwise, the displays carries towards the Clifford pier. Wrapping up the exhibits around the marina bay reservoir moving along the marina bay boardwalk. Here, you can find peculiar White UFO like lights (Swans) popping up from the water feature by the Clifford pier area as well as flowering lights lit in clouds of blue and red (Florescentia) by the broadwalk walkway.
All in all, it is nice that art is starting it way back into our cities. This is particular after a pandemic hiatus. Do catch the night show when you are in the marina bay district area. The i-Lights Marina Bay 2022 light show runs would stay lit for a limited period from till 26th Jun this year.
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