IGNITE Broward light show returns for 2023

The Broward Cultural Division, in Partnership with Mad Arts, will be hosting the third annual IGNITE BROWARD: ART AND LIGHT FESTIVAL January 25^th, 2023, through January 29^th, 2023. Doubling in size, the award-winning light and projection mapping festival will return with more art and bigger activations created by top national and international artists and designers. The event is free and family friendly.

The event will kick off on the 25^th at 7pm in Esplanade Park and at the Museum of Discovery & Science’s Atrium (401 SW 2 St, Fort Lauderdale, FL). This year’s IGNITE Broward will showcase 11 spectacular light-based installations created by eight celebrated contemporary artists and designers from France, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Schedule and Locations

Mad Arts in Dania Beach (481 S. Federal Highway)

Daily: Daily: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.: Six interactive light sculptures and installations will take over the gallery and exterior spaces with extended viewing until 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. IGNITE Broward artworks include:

• Melody Figments By MF Dynamics: symbolizing expressions of the human touch as music is manifested, Melody Figments are created as one explores melody, rhythm, and movement while playing a marimba. Using gesture and musical pitch as data, a visual web grows, undulates, and breathes with the crowd-sourced performance.

• As Water Falls by Daniel Iregui / Iregular: As Water Falls is a virtual interactive waterfall that aims to explore different aspects of water and its metaphorical concepts, highlighting our relationship with this precious element. A large-scale installation taking the form of a cascade, the piece reacts to mobile phone flashlights. Elements such as mirrors, actual water, and vibrating motors add to the immersive experience.

• Sound Sculpture by MASARY Studios:Sound Sculpture is an interactive sound and light instrument in which 25 location-aware blocks comprise a massive, wireless midi controller. Each cube represents a musical note in spatial dimension and time. As people interact with the cubes and move them around, new musical structures that change in color, rhythm, melody and harmony are created. 

• DAYDREAM V6 by NONOTAK: DAYDREAM V6 is an audiovisual installation that generates space distortions. Exploring the relationships between space and time, accelerations, contractions, shifts and metamorphosis, the installation aims to establish a physical connection between the virtual space and the real space, blurring the limits and submerging the audience in a short detachment from reality that is an invitation to contemplation.

• poem = work of art by theVERSEverse: Launched in November 2021, this collective of critically acclaimed poets, writers, artists, and creative technologists is working to unlock the literary potential of web3. Through hybrid events, collections and programming, they’re pioneering the future of literature. This exhibition showcases a select number of works from their collection.

• Footprints of Life by Seeper: Footprints of life is an interactive and immersive experience where nature’s stunning life force lights your way. Climate change threatens that life force. What will you do before it’s too late?

Museum of Discovery & Science (401 SW 2 St.) and Esplanade Park (400 SW 2 St.).

Nightly: 6 p.m. – 10 p.m.: Downtown Fort Lauderdale will feature five spectacular outdoor, digital, light-based art and 3D projection mapping installations as part of IGNITE Broward. Artworks include:

• Mother of Tree and Friends by Akiko Yamashita: In this installation, a majestic banyan tree in Esplanade Park is transformed into an interactive “Mother Tree” that invites viewers to communicate with an illuminated forest. The installation uses projections, LEDs, and sound to illustrate the importance of older trees to the forest ecosystem. “Friends” – the trees surrounding the mother tree – begin to respond, and the entire forest starts communicating through an underground mycorrhizal network.

• Talking Heads by Limelight: As human beings, we are capable of numerous facial expressions through the use of dozens of muscles. In this light art installation, two spectacular heads also show countless emotions and react to each other. However, unlike people, these Talking Heads don’t do this by means of muscles, but rather through light. In each of these monumental heads, approximately 4,000 individually controllable LEDs provide different facial expressions in various colors.

• Circle of Life by Limelight: Circle of Life immerses participants in an amazing experience of nature dancing around them in a continuous movement through the cycles of life. Step into a beautiful world and be present in the eternal order of change in nature. Within this immersive experience, projections encompass both the wall of a room as well as the floor, where interactive animation reacts to visitors’ movements.

• Control No Control by Daniel Iregui / Iregular: As human beings, we are capable of numerous facial expressions through the use of dozens of muscles. In this light art installation, two spectacular heads also show countless emotions and react to each other. However, unlike people, these Talking Heads don’t do this by means of muscles, but rather through light. In each of these monumental heads, approximately 4,000 individually controllable LEDs provide different facial expressions in various colors.

• Optical Reality by Seeper: Black and white animated optical-illusion style mapping covers the block walls behind the clock structure. Tied to cues from the clock’s laser mapping, the white block structure of the walls provides a canvas to give the building the illusion of forms shifting and coalescing, effectively dissolving its physicality and throwing the audience into a mind-bending, constantly shifting space. Laser mapping the clock and surrounding metal structure via rapidly-moving laser heads provides a sharp, compelling outline which lifts the structure out against the projection-mapped background. Animations play with the form of the structure, the curving rails, and the clock-face itself, linking to the changes in the wall-based projection mapping show.

The Broward Cultural Division 

The Broward Cultural Division advances arts and culture throughout greater Fort Lauderdale by investing in the creative sector and providing capacity-building opportunities for artists, organizations, and creative talent through events and activities that fuel Broward’s creative infrastructure.

The Cultural Division includes the county’s Public Art & Design program, as well as grant programs that provide over $6 million in annual support for Broward-based cultural organizations and artists and engages the community in education and advocacy initiatives.

For more information on programs, grants, calls-to-artists, and more, visit @BrowardArts on Instagram, Facebook, or online at Broward.org/arts.

Mad Arts 

Mad Arts is a new initiative within the Mad agency that was created to provide a playground for art and artmaking. Mad understands and acknowledges the importance of free studio space, equipment, and exhibition space for artists’ creative practices to be focused, experimental, and rigorous as well as to thrive in their community. Mad Arts is committed to facilitating the growth and cultivation of artists and creatives at different stages in their careers and leveraging the creative energy generated in the space to create exceptional arts programming.

Founded in 2016 by Marc Aptakin, the Mad Arts studios and galleries are driven by the continuous desire to explore and strengthen the cultural and artistic significance of its creative community. For more information, visit yeswearemadarts.com.