A few weeks ago I went to Lightscape, an outdoor, night time public art light experience at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. I have been to a few other light themed experiences at other Botanic Gardens, including Electric Desert at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, AZ, but this was my first time going to one here in New York City.

Overall Lightscape was a fun outdoor winter adult (and kid-friendly) activity and a unique public art exhibition. We walked there from our house and got there around 7:30pm on 50-degrees Fahrenheit evening. The warmish temperature made the whole experience much more pleasant, even if it was strange that it wasn’t that cold in late December. There were quite a few people at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, but it didn’t feel too crowded since everyone kept walking down the path and people were pretty respectful of personal space at each installation.

The light installations were created by a variety of artists and art agencies, including Pitaya (based in France), Fog-Man (based in Colorado), tilt (based in France), Mandylights (based in Australia/UK) , Challenge Your Imagination (based in NYC), Black Circle Creative (based in Chicago), ITHACA (based in the UK), Jacqueline Woodson (based in Brooklyn), Jacob M Fisher (based in NYC), and Christopher Wren (based in Chicago). Pitaya had a few installations that mostly included LED tubes shaped like chandeliers, led lights in the form of tropical plants, and LED lights on trees. I liked the idea of Pitaya’s Wish Tree, which prompted you to write a wish using light from your mobile phone, but it didn’t work very well for me or my husband.

I also enjoyed the simplicity of TILT’s White Peonies, which featured larger-than-life light up peonies. Mandylights’ Winter Cathedral was beautiful, even if it even if it caused me the most stress because people would hang out in the middle of it to take photos, stopping the flow of people walking through. With COVID-19/Omicron cases still peaking here in NYC, I didn’t want to take any chances hanging out with a crowd even if it was outside.

After a while, the displays started to get a little redundant, and I wish there was a bit more creativity in both use of light and thought behind the display. It was nice to see locally-based Brooklyn writer Jacqueline Woodson featured via Remember The Light Inside You, which included her poems projected on the walking path throughout the experience, but I wasn’t particularly impressed by the poems or the display of them, which was designed by Shakiem Reed. There didn’t seem to be much relationship to the other light displays and definitely not to the music being played near the poems.

Fire Garden, by Ashley Bertling of Black Circle Creative, was a really interesting installation. It included actual fire from hand-poured candles that illuminated in a rustic metal scene that was calming and unpredictable. I also really enjoyed Pathways, by Challenge Your Imagination, which was a simple series of laser lights that drew lines between trees.

The music was the weakest part of the whole experience. The first song we came upon was “When You Wish Upon a Star”, which just made me feel like I was at Disneyland. After that the playlist seemed completely random, with some nice holiday jazz, then intense theme music, then ambient sounds. Besides Sea of Light, by ITHACA, which was basically a lawn of lights that danced to the audio, none of the music seemed to correlate with the light exhibits. This is not a big deal, and I know that correlating the music with the exhibits is a whole other level of time, money, and expertise, but I was expecting that considering tickets were $34 each and this is Brooklyn! The last song we heard as we exited was Alicia Keys’ New York, which just made me think, why weren’t their more local light and musical artists included in this exhibition? I also learned nothing about the botanical garden itself. There didn’t seem to be any connection between the light exhibitions and what you might normally learn at the botanic garden.

I am sure Lightscape was expensive and difficult to put on, especially since there’s a lot of technical rigging and electric needs for these types of outdoor-friendly exhibitions, however, considering they seemed to hire a lot of out-of-state firms to put exhibits up, you would think they could have used some of that money for at least a few more local artists and some more thoughtful, place-based exhibitions.

The signage was ok. They used QR codes for each exhibit, which was easy enough to do, but for some exhibits, like the Wish Tree where you were supposed to write with your phone light, it would have been more helpful to just have instructions illuminated on a big sign so more people could get the gist of the display instead of everyone just being confused and then crowding around the one QR code sign.

There was also no signage, that we saw, for the fire pit were we were supposedly able to roast marshmallows. I was very bummed about the s’more situation, as it was one of the main reasons I wanted to go to Lightscape. On their website they advertised “Concessions selling hot drinks and light fare are available along the route (think: roast-your-own s’mores!)”. We bought one of the overpriced s’more kits ($9 for two servings of crumbly graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate). The person at the concession told us we would see the fire pit where we could roast the marshmallows. We definitely saw the Fire Garden with small buckets of fire, but no fire pit. I’m assuming they didn’t have it during the time were were there, but when we asked towards the end they said it was there. We left with the overpriced s’more kit in my purse (which we later used at Industry City’s fire pit).

Here are some ideas of what Lightscape could do for an improved public art experience next year:

Produce exhibitions that interact with the botanics of the Botanic Garden.

Be more thoughtful about the music, perhaps consider having live musicians on special nights.
Have not just one but many themed s’more stations with fire pits and themed cocktails — this is the real reason we’re going right? To eat sweets and drink hot holiday-themed beverages. Perhaps some nearby bars could do pop-ups on different nights.
More projection mapping that interacts with not just the botanicals, but also the audio in the space.
More interactive projects that actually create connections between attendees. It seemed very stupid to write a wish that no one but you and whoever you were with could see.
Create a digital long tail for the exhibitions — for example if the wishes written on the Wish Tree were actually collected and populated live on a website that could be viewed from anyone, anywhere, that would be really cool and interesting!
Have a workshop where attendees can actually learn about how this type of light art is made and produced. I’ve worked with LED artists to lead a workshop where you create your own simple LED ring and it was very exciting for the attendees. LEDs are not that expensive and you can charge extra for the workshop.

I’m glad we went to Lightscape and I will probably go again in the future, especially since it does seem like a fun thing to do with kids (even though everything is super expensive). I just hope they feature some more local artists, have more thoughtful music, and overall a better connection to the Botanic Garden itself next year!

Review of Lightscape at Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Distill Creative | Brooklyn, NY