Peter Goers: I’m completely in the dark as to the appeal of Wisdom of AI Light

It’s really just unappealing froth and bubble, writes Peter Goers, after finding the festival a far from dazzling experience.

When it comes to art, beware of geeks bearing gifs.

Let there be light. Let there be Illuminate Adelaide. But is it enlightening?

It’s certainly popular. Several attractions have been extended due to popular demand into the cold August nights. The free light show along North Terrace has become a popular promenade for young families – a parade of pushes and prams. It’s not very exciting but it’s free and it’s something to do.

The revival of last year’s illuminations in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens has been well-received and someone I know loved it although they confessed to being chemically enhanced. The illuminations at the Adelaide Zoo have been less well received and apparently a highlight is seeing pelicans being fed at night while you lick a palm oil ice cream and help destroy the habitat of orang utans.

You would have to be high as a giraffe. Picture: Frankie The Creative

Lee Cumberlidge is a co-founder and creative director of Illuminate Adelaide – the Marshall Government’s idea of a winter festival and he refuses to tell this commentator how many millions of dollars his festival is given in government funding.

He says this is “commercial in confidence”. Actually, it’s our taxes funding all this, plus steep entrance fees, so light needs to be shed on this. Is it worth it?

The marquee event, Wisdom of AI Light is in the Illuminate Pavilion which has blocked off Rundle Road for nearly three months even though the show only goes for a month. Why couldn’t it have been in the park, like the big bumper Fringe hubs? Why does it have to close crucial access to the city?

Remember the van Gogh Alive experience at North Adelaide? It was beautiful, interactive, immersive and unforgettable. It was a triumph.

Wisdom of AI Light tries to be similar and is a big, bland bore. A flop. A fizz. A turkey from Turkey via Ouchhh Studio in Istanbul. It’s over-intellectualised, meaningless twaddle. Maybe I’m stupid, but its fuzzy narrative is impossible to follow. It’s supposedly about Da Vinci. Einstein, Galileo, neolithic structures, subatomic particles and space. It’s really just unappealing froth and bubble.

You line up as though for a ride at the Royal Show and you stand in a cold, big white box with hundreds of mainly unmasked people and images are projected on the walls and floor.

Ouchhh Studio’s Wisdom of AI Light. Picture: Supplied

Unfortunately the images on the floor seem out of focus. It’s very kitsch with lots of bubbles and balloons. It seems like the same computerised effect repeated ad nauseam. Then we get lots of computer code and dreary, ineffectual music.

Audience members are bored to sobs. They look at their phones and talk among themselves. Who could blame them? You pay $35 to be bored witless. There is much less here than meets the eye. The emperor has no clothes. It’s like looking at one big screen saver and this is the sort of art computer programmers program. I’m completely in the dark as to the appeal of Wisdom of AI Light. It’s overrated dross.

Watt’s on second at this light festival? The light displays along Rundle Street, including two lots of illuminated washing on lines and possibly dangerous, unattended braziers are unexciting and the light displays along North Terrace are nowhere near as effective or awe inspiring as the brewery Christmas lights, those at Lobethal and best of all, Len Doof’s spectacular Christmas lights at Salisbury North. The North terrace display is pretty ordinary apart from the snow globe around Thomas Elder. The winter wonderland display outside the SA Museum is pathetic but it’s worth a trip to see the noble facade of the SA Art Gallery gloriously illuminated with a Vincent Namatjira painting. The gallery has never looked better and it should be a permanent illumination.

Hopefully other attractions in this festival are more effective.

Illuminate Adelaide is leaving many of us in the dark. Bring on the SALA Festival – real art and real enlightenment.

Peter Goers can be heard weeknights and Sundays on ABC Radio Adelaide.