Flickering fireflies
Nuit Blanche gains a sponsor for socially interactive electronic art project
Nuit Blanche OttawaGatineau, set to hold its second, all-night festival of art on Sept. 21, has its first corporate sponsor for an art project.
The industry organization recycleyourelectronics.ca has commissioned and is sponsoring the Lumipendant Firefly project, which will put electronic, flickering fireflies on 250 people on the night of the festival.
Nuit Blanche has other businesses, groups and galleries that support it with services (for example, Ford Canada), or mount and host art projects (SAW Gallery, Canadian Museum of Civilization, Business Improvement Groups in various neighbourhoods, and others).
The firefly project is the first time an art project has been directly commissioned by a corporate sponsor, a practice that’s common at other, more-established Nuit Blanche events in Toronto or other cities, and important to its growth in the capital region.
The fireflies were built by Ottawa artists Mark Stephenson, Darcy Whyte and Michael Grant, and are made of recycled materials, which speaks to the business of recycleyourelectronics.ca.
The devices are bug-shaped and covered with circuitry that activates tiny lights and sense when other fireflies are nearby. The more fireflies there are nearby, the more excited (so to speak) each firefly becomes.
“Eventually, when you become a social butterfly or firefly, it goes through this rapid-paced sequence that is really beautiful to watch,” says NBOG creative director Megan Smith. “They’re mimicking social behaviour patterns.”
The fireflies will be distributed during the Supernova Base Camp party at the Ottawa Art Gallery at the start of NBOG 2013. Supernova is the theme of this year’s festival.
When the night is done those who have fireflies can keep them, Smith says, though they’re encouraged to return them to recycleyourelectronics.ca, or even better, to return them to the artists, who can use them for education or other projects.
“The artists can run education workshops with them, and reuse them to teach basic programming, open-source programming,” Smith says.
Dozens of art projects will be part of Nuit Blanche this year, in interior and exterior spaces primarily throughout the ByWard Market, Hintonburg and downtown Gatineau.