GLOW: Santa Monica - Overview- 07.20.08
I think i’ve waited 25 years for GLOW to happen - i love my beach towns, and Santa Monica is where i grew up, and the first ocean and beach i ever touched… and FINALLY, the City of Santa Monica let go of all their many rules for 12 precious hours (and we went, from 7pm to about 6:30am) - with an incredible first GLOW festival - the pier, with its new crazy uberbright-LED ferris wheel, the whole park overlooking PCH, the neighboring restaurants and shops, the beach, the work out rings and ropes - all packed with people of all sorts and all ages all night long… enjoying various music, techno/eco-art installations, and ultimately just each others company, and how nice it was to have all of this come together so beautifully and so playfully in Santa Monica. So before i get into the specific installations i have to show you video of… here’s an overview post to give you a feel of what an incredibly nice 12 hours it was… highlights are definitely lying on the beach listening to pirate lullabies at 3am, the interactive projection on a HUGE water spray, the computer fan driven upcycled electronic organisms under the pier, and watching people from such varying walks of life coming together for this Santa Monica first. (Oh and for really odd things, in the midst of all of this, we even ended up at Google for drinks, since the bars were just maddness - which led to a finger rocket war through the cubicles.)
And as for those precious rules we grew up with… well tonight - there were tons of dogs running around, balls/frisbees/everything flying around, no lifeguards in the towers, i’m pretty sure people were dressing/undressing in their tents, definitely people camping and sleeping all over the beach to experience sunrise, while cleaner than expected, some areas got quite littered with trash, drinks were flowing - even in glass bottles, drum circles were popping up, loud music that “caused the neighbors to complain” late into the night, art you had to loiter to experience under the pier, random goodies for sale, a few cars on the beach, and i think we definitely saw some rascal type scooter things on the bike path…. and this sign forbidding it all right in front of the whole thing! We also saw the glass house hotboxed right behind a no smoking permitted sign… what a crazy 12 hours of Santa Monica amusement it was!
Also… if you want more pics, threw a bunch in the gallery - and will clean up some video to show you how some of the best installations worked too!
yeah I was wondering if there was going to be a Glow Festival for the 2009. Let me know I want to work with y’all. Went to 08’ and loved it, Great energy.
----- Mark Johnsen 04.03.09 15:48