please empty your brain below
That space based light display that we orbit stole the show.

Still Anon | 06.12.20 - 8:23 a.m. | #

The Tetra Park by Mandylights puts me in mind of a sequence from the "Bal-Ham, Gateway to the South" sketch narrated by Peter Sellers: "...the town is spread below us like a fairyland of glittering lights, changing all the time from green, amber, red, red & amber & back to green"

msjs | 06.12.20 - 9:13 a.m. | #

Not to denigrate your usual excellent prose, DG, but the best bits are the Artbollox.

Caz | 06.12.20 - 9:58 a.m. | #

"Curiously the tops of the trees were all turned southward ...". Not that curious, as that's just plants growing towards the sun, which is what they normally do. Artbollox indeed!

Many moons ago in school biology we confused a bean seed by spinning it round for a week, messing with its sense of gravity and causing its root to grow at an angle instead of straight down. I remember because I built the spinning mechanism out of Meccano.

miker | 06.12.20 - 10:31 a.m. | #

Canary Wharf lights last year were equally banal. When you think what could be done it’s a shame . Mind you it seems to be lthe kind of thing people that agents for eggbox flats and offices think their clients will like so perhaps that’s the intended audience.

Jenny | 06.12.20 - 10:41 a.m. | #

Two years ago (?) on my first visit, I was totally entranced by the cascading water curtain under the railway bridge, into which was "light-printed" the scrolling news banner. As a cynical engineer, I just could not work out how they did it (some Heath Robinson ideas)! Then last year, something similar but so, so simple (boring). The rest of the show seemed also mundane in comparison, but maybe that's a case of been there, seen it. I certainly won't be flogging up from Croxley this year.

NicK | 06.12.20 - 11:03 a.m. | #

Lots of bollox then.

B | 06.12.20 - 11:33 a.m. | #

The cascading water curtain first appeared at the Olympic Park in 2012 and is now a permanent artwork at Canary Wharf. It's switched off at the moment though.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 06.12.20 - 12:52 p.m. | #

I can find corroborating evidence of this…

< “When the East India Docks were constructed in 1790, the remains of a great subterranean forest were found in a state of preservation…. Curiously enough, however, the tops of the trees were all turned southward as if they had been swept by some great convulsion of nature coming from the north.” – Thames: Sacred River by Peter Ackroyd, 2007.

<< “One problem had been the discovery, 12ft below the surface, of fossilized trees, including a hazel tree with quantities of nuts still on its branches. Throughout 1790 ‘people came from far and near to collect the nuts, and pieces of trees’.” – Survey of London (volume 44), edited by Hermione Hobhouse, 1994.

<<< “Toward the end of the year 1789, and in all 1790, people came from far and near to collect the nuts, and pieces of trees, which were found, in digging this dock, in a sound and perfect state, although they must have laid here for ages. They seem to have been overset by some convulsion, or violent impulse, from the northward, as all their tops lay toward the south.” – The Ambulator: or, A Pocket Companion in a Tour Round London…, c/o Scatcherd and Letterman, 1807.

That’s the excavation of Brunswick Dock, aka East India (Export) Dock, now the Newport Avenue estate, E14 (East India DLR).

Rich G | Homepage | 07.12.20 - 1:54 a.m. | #

It all looks much better after dark: a pleasant evening out and Murmuration is hypnotically lovely. A quixotic choice to go by day.

Also, you omitted the very striking Neon Tree.

David | 18.12.20 - 8:04 p.m. | #











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