Landscape Architecture Aotearoa - Winter 2016 Issue 01 | Page 10

8 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AOTEAROA LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION: WINTER WONDERLAND: On June 10-11 in Philadelphia, The Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) is convening preeminent thinkers and influencers from around the world to set the course for landscape architecture to make its vital contribution in the 21st century. The Summit on Landscape Architecture and the Future will give an exceptional line up of established and emerging leaders (including Jacky Bowring, of Lincoln University) the opportunity to reflect on what landscape architecture has achieved over the last 50 years, present bold ideas for what it should achieve in the future, and engage in lively debate about realizing landscape architecture’s potential and effecting real world change. During the summit, landscape architect Joanna Karaman and film-maker Michael Rubin will capture the overall energy and spirit of the event through one-on-one interviews with participants. The resulting 15-20 minute documentary film will create a narrative of the Summit that showcases the diversity of speakers and topics covered at the event. The interviews will give speakers an opportunity to further explain and reflect on their declarations, as well as give a chance for attendees to voice their ideas and reactions. The film will premiere in October at the 2016 International Festival of Landscape Architecture in Canberra, Australia.  To celebrate its 200th birthday, the Royal Botanic Garden will explode with many types of illumination during Vivid Sydney, which claims to be ‘the world’s largest festival of light, music and imagination’. Enter the Garden through the historic Queen Elizabeth II gates from the Sydney Opera House forecourt, which will be brought to life with 3D-mapped projections. As darkness falls the transformation begins: gentle slopes become electric grids, sweeping shafts of light direct attention from the path deep into the foliage. Patterns and movements dance across the trees; elsewhere bursts of colour splash and dazzle and ripple across the lawns. Follow the illuminated colonial seawall to emerge into a wonderland of trees and bushes that glow and shimmer. A central feature of Garden of Light is the Cathedral of Light, an immense arched tunnel 60m long and 8m high, made of tens of thousands of white LEDs. From the outside, it appears to radiate gentle but brilliant light at all angles; inside, the glowing monolith is revealed as myriad points of light. Further along, a zone of landscaped crags and giant figs have been video-mapped and used for projections as the Garden reveals a surprisingly bold nightlife. Then experience the Sentiment Cocoon, a collaborative interactive installation that seeks to express human emotion through the medium of light.  Through June 18, the Royal Botantic Garden will be transformed as part of Vivid Sydney. The Sentiment Cocoon is an interactive display of sight, sound and touch.