Client: Calgary City Public Art

Overview

River of Light is a multi-site light and sound installation that reflects on the ‘river and water use’ as a global issue through the local perspective to communicate the importance of water preservation to generations to come. The River of Light is a local and community focused installation that has a global outreach in terms of visibility. Gaining local and international recognition due to its community large participation, this project was recognised in the top 50 outstanding public art projects in the 2010 PAN American Awards for 2010.

Goals

The project was a response to call for public art by the City of Calgary to create art interventions and celebrate the local Bow River. This work spans of nearly 6 miles. The artistic team spent one year and half planning and 4 weeks on site installing the work.

Process

This project involved many different people from the city. It became a city wide owned project with multiple groups having their own rules such as a construction company for booming the river, design students helping to build the interventions, kayakers guiding the floating lights in the flow of the river, volunteers from schools to do the launch and removal of materials from the river, and more.

Additional Information

The River of Light was firstly conceived in UK for the launch of the cultural Olympiad in London in 2008. Creatmosphere has created many other interventions on rivers, lakes and seas as part of the efforts to bring attention to environmental subjects such as preservation of rivers and other water resources world wide.