I was excited about Lightscape because I thought it was sort of an expansion of Entwined — a bunch of large glowing installations in the park. In past years Entwined has been so lovely, and I have enjoyed tooling around its space and especially the part where I get to observe little kids freely running around in the excitement of being out at night in a place where it’s safe to run around. The pieces are by local artists and the entire experience costs nothing.
Unfortunately Lightscape turned out to be the opposite of that. Huge lines, expensive tickets, narrow, crowded pathways and a linear, predetermined path. I was elbow to elbow in a herd of people with hacking wet coughs, shuffling slowly along the path while ushers in safety vests barked at us to keep moving. There was pointless music blaring that seemed mostly disconnected from the handful of main exhibits. The exhibits themselves were pretty, and I can’t tell how much I would have liked them if it were possible to contemplate and enjoy them freely. In any case they would have been much nicer if they weren’t space-limited photography stations connected by linear paths. In short it sucked, it felt “commercial” or corporate in the worst way, soulless, controlling, divorced from the beauty of the botanical gardens rather than enhancing it. Lightscape had all the charm of a security line at the airport or a maze invented by Temple Grandin to lead cattle into a slaughterhouse.
I also hate things like theme parks, in general. I have a sort of allergy. Ugh!!
There were food trucks and popcorn stands and cocktails and hot chocolate and don’t get me wrong, I like those things, but not when they are shoved in to every fifth of a mile of the claustrophobic trail with the roar of their generators fighting with the bad music (and worse amplifiers) of the exhibits.
How do people “enjoy” things like this? And people didn’t appear to be really enjoying it, to me, they were tense, unhappy, constantly scolding their children for behaving wrong or not appreciating whatever it was they were supposed to be appreciating.
The children would have had more fun if you handed them flashlights and turned them loose to run around a meadow and make up their own games.
Well, that’s what I think! Just so you know!
Brought to you by a child of the kindly 70s.
Art should be free, and it should be anarchic!