The City of Nanaimo kicked off a winter arts festival to celebrate the 150-year anniversary since the municipality’s first council meeting.
An opening ceremony for Luminous Paths: Nanaimo’s 150 and Beyond was held on Jan. 22 at Maffeo Sutton Park. The festival included live music, food trucks, activities, artist talks and educational workshops.
Seven temporary art displays will remain in the park until Feb. 17. During a tour of the art for media and dignitaries, Jaime-Brett Sine, Nanaimo’s arts and culture coordinator, said the idea of the festival was to illuminate the park.
“Our history is far longer than 150 years, it's that incorporation that is 150 years, so I was thinking as a city as we move forward – obviously a little biased as the cultural coordinator – [of] the way arts and culture are illuminating that path forward, essentially lighting the way and so that gave me the idea of this luminous paths, which is where that name has come from,” she said.
Two pieces from Monkey C Interactive offer a chance for visitors to engage and play with the art. One of them, titled, Pythagorhythm, is a music creation installation that encourages collaboration to remix sounds. It has 24 sensors and responsive lighting.
The other is called Candycombs and features pressure-sensitive floor panels that light up and trigger sound loops. It is designed to encourage multiple users to make music together by stepping on the floor.
Two of the featured art pieces are by Nanaimo artist David Martinello. His piece Reconversion, inspired by wood’s characteristics, uses lumber and the colour green to inspire thought about the manufactured, and natural world. His second piece, Continuum, is a pixelated representation of a forest meant to encourage viewers to consider the value of timber.
Cyber Tree is a piece by Jenny Smith that uses video inside of a manufactured tree to encourage the viewer to contemplate human’s relationships to technology.
“The video is of hands touching real trees and so it is meant to touch the inside of the cyber tree and then it extends out if you are standing on the other side of it to touch the viewer and so really it speaks to a philosophical entanglement we have with artificial intelligence and technology,” Smith said. “Cyber Tree is a cautionary tale about technology and it counter-intuitively asks you to get lured into it, but really what I want you to do is look back at the real trees and value the real trees.”
The Portal is an interactive piece by Mauro Dalla Costa that uses a symbolic doorway to encourage reflection and wonder.
Yahkikiw (they push forward in growth) is a holographic acrylic tree by bailey macabre. It is meant to symbolize growth, movement and the complexity of identity.
A map with a suggested route to view the art fixtures can be found on the city’s website. There will a closing ceremony on Feb. 17.
“This festival is just really special," Sine said. "It’s a time of year you don’t have a lot of people venturing into a park at night, when it’s dark and when it’s cold and illuminating the park at night … highlighting the beauty of our cultural community is a really special thing.”
