Lighting up the long winter nights with distinctive works from local and international light artists, the Toronto Light Festival illuminates the Distillery Historic District from January to March. Visitors are taken on a visual journey as the festival transforms the picturesque historic neighbourhood into a large open-air gallery.
This winter, Torontonians of all ages are encouraged to come out of the dark and into the light.
While you’re there, be sure to stop for a cozy meal at one of the fine restaurants that populate the District or a warming cup of authentic hot chocolate at Soma
A tasty addition to this year’s festival is the Gummy Bear Pyramid by Dicapria, a 14-foot tall pyramid light installation made out of more than 200,000 gummy bears. The gummy bears aren’t real, they were hand-casted out of custom moulds, but they’ve been individually placed and arranged into intricate patterns resulting in a stain-glassed window effect. Visitors can even step inside the pyramid and tap into their playful sides.
Some of the installations are interactive, including LightPiano 2.0 by a Netherlands team of artists called Kleurbleur. Both artwork and instrument, visitors can play the piano in which the keys are connected to illuminated cubes set up about 100 feet away. The sound of the piano is then visualized through the corresponding cubes as the keys of the piano are played. Visitors not only then control the sound of the installation but the light as well.
Another interactive installation is Birds Fly Around With You by Japanese artist Masamichi Shimada. The piece is based on the zoetrope, a pre-film animation device, consisting of a cylinder which is spun at a certain speed. As you look through the slits in the cylinder, you see a figure moving. Using this concept, visitors walk into the centre of the installation and activate the machine resulting in the birds illuminating one-by-one. The more people inside the installation, the more the birds will fly around. Kids will particularly love this one!
