Light’s relationship with nature and the city will serve as the main artistic direction for this year’s iLight Marina Bay event. Organised by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) and curated by Randy Chan, Principal Architect of Zarch Collaboratives, the 5th installment of the Asia sustainable light art festival will be held from 3 to 26 March 2017 along the Marina Bay waterfront promenade.

Among the 20 light installations, the festival will feature five works by students from National University of Singapore, Nanyang Polytechnic, Singapore University of Technology and Design, LASALLE College of the Arts and Raffles College of Higher Education, making this the highest participation from local schools to date.

Singaporean artist Lee Yun Qin will be presenting MoonFlower – a luminescent display of flowers that are each powered by their own solar-powered LED light. Following the festival, some 800 of these intricate stalks will be made available to the public for adoption (at a minimum of $5 with all proceeds going towards the Garden City Fund), making this the first time too, that visitors will be allowed to take home a piece of installation from the event.

Another notable installation, Northern Lights is a significant project that was previously shown at Amsterdam Light Festival 2015 – 2016. Inspired by the aurora borealis, the installation uses a carefully programmed light story performed on 100 vertically positioned light lines equipped with LED sources to emulate the natural phenomenon.

iLight Marina Bay’s international reach this year sees a gathering of light art installations from nine countries, including Indonesia, France, Sweden, and the UK. Apart from Amsterdam Light Festival (the Netherlands), iLight will be partnering Bella Skyway Festival in Poland and Scottsdale Canal Convergence in the US through the cross sharing of local and international installations.

Three distinct ‘festival hubs’ are also set to complement the 20 light creations as part of the programme’s aim to provide a greater variety of community-centric activities. They include Art-Zoo for imaginative play, The Fantastical World of eco.me for sustainability-themed activities and GastroBeats for food and music.