A sneak peek of two giant pom poms that will be wandering Wellington's waterfront for the LUX light festival.
Wellingtonians heading down to the waterfront this weekend will see dazzling lights, stunning installations, and two giant pom pom creatures clumsily roaming through the crowds.
Massey University fashion design student Kate Jones' exhibit, Pom and Pom, has been chosen as one of the dozen light sculptures and interactive installations that will be on show at the LUX light festival, opening on Friday.
"It's pretty much just sort of two giant pom pom characters kind of just running around LUX bumbling into each other and chasing this little, like, UV orb," said Jones.
Drama students will wear the costumes, which are made from about 100 spools of yarn, 6m of fabric, and 25m of UV LED strips.
The costumes will light up in black light areas, but also have lighting inside to make them glow.
SEED is described as a contemplative multi-layered flora form sculpture that uses metaphoric and poetic visualisations of nature in stages of bloom and decay. Image / Supplied
The exhibit was inspired by a university assignment, which asked students to devise a contemporary design project.
Initially a group project, Jones took it further to create a performance piece in which two people wear separate clusters of fabric, yarn and lights and move their way around the festival site accompanied by a black clad figure, a dancer from Toi Whakaari, whose role is to dance around and between the poms with an external light source in the form of an orb, which will appear to be hovering.
"The goal is that it can be seen and able to be thrown around," Jones said.
"The orb will illuminate key features of the Poms and add to the performative and comic nature of the piece.
"I just wanted something a bit fun. I'm currently in my last year of fashion and I like using texture and creating things that people want to touch and you want to just kind of cuddle it ... I just love colour and messiness."
Her work will be joined by two other exhibits called SEED and KINESIS crafted by Massey students.
SEED is made by three design graduate, Molly Brankin, Jasmine Grace, and Rachel Neser, and is described as a contemplative multi-layered flora form sculpture that uses metaphoric and poetic visualisations of nature in stages of bloom and decay.
Kate Jones with her LUX entry Pom and Pom, which will roam the waterfront chasing a glowing orb. Photo / Supplied
KINESIS, by Neser and Grace, is an audio-visual installation that uses projected film, light and sound.
A further exhibit by Ms Neser and Ms Grace is KINESIS, an audio-visual installation that uses projected film, light and sound.
The free public light festival aims to turn Wellington into a celebration of light, art, technology and design.
