Luma: get ready to look inside a ‘brain’

AUDIOVISUAL whizz Tom Lynch has used his brain as inspiration for this year’s Luma Southern Light Project, which opens in Queenstown tonight.

The Queenstown resident has been involved in all the full Luma events in the Queenstown Gardens, but this will be the first time his own creation, Amygdala, has been on display.

Mr Lynch, who coowns TomTom Productions and Sound People, said his piece was ‘‘a bit different’’.

‘‘Some people might hate it, some people might like it.

‘‘It’s quite long, so most people won’t actually see most of it . . . a lot of people will get a different experience.’’

Described as a ‘‘chaotic attempt at recreating the unwanted thoughts that enter the mind’’ using mirrorballs, projection and lighting, Mr Lynch said the work was essentially about mental health.

‘‘It’s supposed to be a little bit chaotic because, in a way, it’s just kind of about the brain.

‘‘It’s all quite hectic and then there are some calm moments; there are some uncomfortable moments, there’s a lot going on.

‘‘It’s not just a nice thing to look at the whole time.’’

Mr Lynch made the audio for the piece by ‘‘randomly playing my guitar’’.

Mr Lynch had been involved with Luma almost since its inception and said the attraction for him was using audiovisual equipment in different ways.

‘‘There are no rules, there are no guidelines; it’s just ‘what cool stuff can we do with the cool stuff that we own?’.’’

While working on the installations was a yearround project, Mr Lynch said it was difficult to find time ‘‘to do it justice’’.

‘‘The stupid thing I always do is make my things basically so you can’t test them beforehand, so I never know if they’re going to work until we’re in the forest . . . I don’t know why I torture myself in that way, but it’s the way I do it.’’

Luma, a free, familyfriendly event, runs nightly from 5pm until 10pm from today until Monday, inclusive.

This year there would be a manned dropoff area on Park St and organisers encouraged people to carpool and use that area to reduce congestion.

PHOTOS: PETER MCINTOSH Hundreds of secondary school pupils from around the province converged on Dunedin’s Kaikorai Valley College yesterday for the last of the Otago Secondary Schools Sports Association’s fourrace Otago Secondary Schools Cross Country Championships series. Among those competing in the under14 races were Blake MacDonald (top right,13), of South Otago High School, Summer Claridge (right, 13), of Dunstan High School, and Mt Aspiring College pupils (above, from left) Amelia Holmes, Pipi Horan, Rose Armstrong and Emily Findlay (all 13).

Tom Lynch