Power Plant is part of the 2014 Festival of the Arts and consists of converting a large chunk of the Wellington Botanic Gardens into a piece of installation art. Ada and I went to see it on Friday, starting our walk at the 9:20 pm slot; it made it a bit of a late night for a 7 year old, given we finished up at 11, but Ada enjoyed it thoroughly and was a box of fluffy ducks the next day.
The exhibition itself was superb: winding down from the Cable Car it goes down through forest-in paths, past the duck pond and flower beds, then back up to the Cable Car by a different route. There’s a good variety of installations, with sound and visuals well-chosen. Particular highlights for me:
- Trees full of disco balls casting vertigo-inducing patterns on the ground below them, with a pair of old-style gramaphones playing disks of noise.
- A field of lights hung over the path with small glass lampshades. Each light had a bell clapper attached to it, which rung the glass when it was powered on; as patterns of light drifted across the field, the ringing followed them.
- The amazing spider web of lighting: a set of lines radiating out from a central point in the trees, across the path, in the style of a spider’s web, which periodically lit up like a lightning strike with a huge cracking noise. Much jumping.
- Fields of shaped, internally lit dresses hanging under trees with eerie music in the background; it was like a Sapphire and Steel episode given form.
- The incredible fire-music of the lake; a set of flaming tubes had been put in the duck pond, each playing one note as gas was driven through them. Squirts of gas changed the volume (and flare intensity), with a musician controlling them from the rotunda.
Awesome evening.