Amsterdam Light Festival 2014-2015

While the family was on winter break we did one super fun activity which was visit The Amsterdam Light Festival. The light festival has been going on since mid-December and will end around the 18th of January. 

These light installations were done by various artists using various materials and each has their own story behind it, we found it quite fascinating.

178 Bottles, 1 Message

Saskia Hoogendoorn and Lieuwe Martijn Wijnands

This one had a great message, with all the turmoil in the world today I think the message behind this fixture is a good one.

Amsterdam has present 178 different nationalities according to our tour guide. This figure uses 178 different bottles, it apparently was inspired by former city councillor, Floor Wibaut, who said, "There's only one land: earth. There is only one nation: humankind. There's only one faith: love."

This installation changed colors and apparently if you had an app you could use it to make your home country's flag appear on the heart.

Light Bridge

Tjep

This is one I saw for weeks before it was turned on and even before I actually knew about the light festival! 

This one is a nod to Amsterdam's bridges. There is the big river, Amstel, which you are looking at in the below photo, plus various canals around the city, so Amsterdam has a lot of bridges, the Light Bridge gives us a beautiful variation of a bridge to look at. This supposedly would react to movement from the water and street but everyone I talked to that saw it never felt it had any reactions other than it's normal color change.

Love the reflection on the water.

The Gatekeepers
Irma de Vries

This was one statue of The Gate Keepers. It was located in front of the Hermitage Amsterdam, which currently has a showcase of paintings of Gatekeepers from the 17th and 18th Centuries.

Streetlights

Art Students

Private Sponsorship

This one was added late and I didn't think to take a picture of the artists. But, it is sort of a history of the city represented by streetlights, which of course, needed to be the famous "red lights". There are old fashioned lights to the lights we see today. This wasn't originally part of the tour, but the art students wanted so badly to have the installation on the tour the worked to get private sponsorship, it is the only sponsored installation.

Re(bi)cycle Dome
Vasili Popov

This was constructed using 300 bicycle rims from unused bicycles. In order to make it light up you had to pump an old water pump!

I feel like this is actually a great representation of Amsterdam, with the city having about double the number of bikes as it has residents, biking is where it is at in Amsterdam!

Sneaky Serpents

Tropism; Robin Noorda, Menno Schrap, Paul Godschalk, Margot van de Stolpe

This was a really unique installation. The red serpents reacted to noise so if you yelled they would shoot off and be gone!

Constell.ation
LIKEarchitects

These were made out of plastic tubes, they honestly reminded me of the stuff you would connect to your dryer for venting it. It was a really neat piece.

Waste Lights

Waste World

Urban Waste Collective

This would have been a great exhibit-if it worked. The globe is made of cans, and has thousands of LED lights in it. Then, to power the lights they used old batteries that were recycled to power the globe.

Batteries that, no matter how many they were just didn't seem to power the globe :(

Flawlss

Gonzalo Bascuñan and Perrine Vichet

These changed colors and the changing colors represented the four seasons. It was beautiful!

Landschapslumen
Beeldjutters

This hologram on this tree was really unique. I wish I had thought to get a video, but it turned into a dancing lady-tree, then ended like this before starting over. According to our tour guide apparently the woman who owned this building and tree back in WWII was quite famous and she managed to save this tree having it be the only tree on the block that was not cut down to provide warmth for the homes on the block.

This one is a little creepy, but was probably my favorite display. This had been a hospital for the Jewish people and "helping" them with family planning during WWII. Basically, it had served as an abortion clinic where many Jewish women or women in mixed marriages (non-Jewish and Jewish) were many times forced to have abortions. 

These hands represent the poor children who never made it out of there.

Sad, but a time in the world's history that must be remember so such a horrible incident is NOT repeated.

As you can tell the hands are "moving" and more appear and disappear as the tape running moves on in it's loop.

I was absolutely fascinated by this display and had to be dragged away from it. I really want to learn more about this hospital.

On the Wings of Freedom
Aether and Hemera

This was another interactive display. Apparently if you had a smartphone you could change the color and pattern of the lights. This was really supposed to represent the change associated with city life and the inspiration that can come from your everyday activities in a fast-paced environment.

Object O
Paul van Laak and Arnout Meijer Studio

This is supposed to represent the sun and moon, warmth and cold.

I love how the birds in the background start off as blue....

Then turn to pink....

...and I think this is my most favorite picture I took the entire walk. She was getting so artsy with her photos.

Camp-Fire

Wilhelmusvlug

Campfires are long seen as a historical place to gather 'round and tell stories and connect with others, this artist is calling for that again, calling it Campfire 2.0, meet up at this place, put down the phone and talk to others. The book goes on to say you could see the city as one large campfire if you just look around and talk to and connect with others.

I will say as time has gone on for me in the Netherlands, I do agree with that...more and more people just strike up conversations with me on a daily basis and even though I do not know much Dutch it does give me a chance to practice and once I get to the point I cannot speak Dutch anymore I say so and usually they know English so we can continue. I think disconnecting every now and then and connecting with the world around you is extremely important!

...then after she got artsy she got a little bit idiotic. haha! Photo bombing us, printing now so we have the silliness immortalized!

The next few will make ya feel a bit funny...

Alley of Light

Serge Schoemaker Architects and DigiLuce

This was comprised of about 2,000 LED lights!

There was a small walkway for you to put yourself in the center of such a display:

All LED's...I LOVED this display!

NOW

De Theatermachine-Floriaan Ganzevoort

This was an interactive exhibit allowing you to change where the word "NOW" was projected-a school, a church, and city hall). If you continued to press these buttons the word now grew bigger and bigger and would eventually explode.

The idea behind this was to represent visitors choosing what they want and get them thinking about what they stand for...which, after world events these last few weeks is a fitting meaning. 

So, that ends the walking tour we paid for. However, there were several more displays all over the city. This one was my favorite, it is right outside of Centraal Station, The House of Cards.

House of Cards

OGE Creative Group

Made up of 125 light boxes representing playing cards. According to our guide book the House of Cards has several levels. On one side it looks like a modern church, and the other a classical structure of building blocks.

I found the house of cards to be pretty amazing. I think overall this was my favorite piece of artwork. Of course I just love card houses, I was always trying to build them as a kid...never was successful...I even used to get my Dad, the architect in on the action...surprisingly his knowledge only went so far in building a house of cards. Apparently it is nothing like building in real life. haha

Well, that concludes my love of the Amsterdam Light Festival 2014-2015...can't wait for next year! 

Does your city have a light festival? What is it like?

Weekend Recap-The one where there was a party in a Church!

This weekend was a pretty fun one I must admit. It was fairly full, yet relaxing. You really can't ask for a better weekend than that...which really is why I am giving it a separate post away from my normal recap in my Menu Plan Monday post!

**(I will warn you in advance, as you scroll down there is a photo of a bronze relief I took that is a hand caressing a breast, I personally do not find it offensive and do not hide this stuff from my child, BUT, if you have children around you don't want to see it or are offended by that please visit the direct link to my Menu Plan Monday post above or check out more travel article I wrote here)**

We had a friend in town so our weekend really started Thursday night. We took him downtown for dinner, a stroll through the red light district, and to one of our favorite bars in the lobby of an old hotel down there.

When we came out at Centraal Station we came upon the House of Cards that is up for the Amsterdam Light Festival. 

Pretty cool huh?! 

After dinner and a stroll through to show him the girls behind the windows we stopped in at our favorite bar. This place is not expensive, it is a little hole in the wall and totally classy as evidenced by the Beethoven plaque. haha

It has two levels and the bartenders are always really nice and it always has people in it but it is never too crowded.

When you order wine you get a whole mini bottle. Really useful when you have two people, but not so much when it is just you. haha

We love this bar so much because you can look down and people watch and with two windows being just under you it is super entertaining! Just remember-NO PHOTOS! 

Here you can even watch people walk on their heads! Not really, but the "hold your child's hand" sign upside down is pretty hysterical. 

This plaque is in the Oudekerksplein, just outside the church, the artist is unknown, but it was installed in 1993.

I love the unknown about this bronze relief, I think it is probably one of my favorite pieces of art in the city.

Just a few blocks away from our favorite bar is another great bar where you can grab a table by the window and do yet more people watching.

But don't take your drinks outside, probably not wroth the €90. 

After this we walked around a bit more then headed home.

This is the metro to Gein, it is always so nice and coming from Centraal there is never anyone on it...but we don't go to Gein, so we get the crappy metro. haha

Friday morning I rode downtown with hubby to meet my friend for coffee and a museum.

I took a different walking route than normal and discovered this awesome courtyard! I love the design of the garden.

After we had coffee we went to the Museum of Bags and Purses. This place is hysterical. First off there was one of those defibrillators on the wall and they had chairs you could carry around with you if you need a rest! I think the average age of visitors here is about 75-80ish. But, it was actually quite interesting and the inside is GORGEOUS! I have more coming but here is a peek.... 

 These are boxes the kids used to use at school. They would keep them at school until Holiday and use them to write on and store their supplies. It did say they didn't have to be fancy, but the child with the most skilled father often had the nicest case. Parental competition even back then! :)

Then, after that I went home to change and met the hubby at work for dinner and his work had a great New Year's party...it was inside an old church! They had been renovating it for quite some time and finally finished it. I would love to get back inside for some better photos during the day.

Sorry for the crooked picture, I was holding wine, my clutch, and trying to take a photo! haha This is the altar where the DJ was. Those fresco's behind him had all been covered up at one point and they really did a great job uncovering them.

This was the Organ...wow! Just breathtaking! How cool is it we got to party under that?!

That staircase! <3 p="">

Then this guy made an appearance. Fire eater, neat, huh?!

Well, after this, where he ate his last bit of fire it just got weird. Like really weird. Like totally freaking me out weird and I can't relive the experience weird. But, ya know, it was entertainment so we just had more wine to get us through ;)

After that we were going to go to a party at a different club but the wind was so bitter and cold that we came home and drank hot chocolate. haha

Then Saturday we woke up to this gem of a day:

The wind eventually blew our neighbors shed over! Thank goodness nothing was in it, but now where will the birds bathe?! 

So, instead of doing anything we stayed in and drank copious amounts of coffee...I mean seriously, I had like 4 cups on Saturday! ha!

We played a little Ohana Mana...this is a favorite for sure!

Sunday was a little more chilled. I took the kiddo to cheerleading, came home to grocery shop and clean up house a little, then once the kiddo was home we decided to go to a movie! I will to a write up eventually but we have unlimited movie passes so we can go to the movies as many times as we'd like in a month for just the cost of our pass, which is an incredible deal and since we don't have cable we do movies! 

We actually got the nice metro this time ;) haha

I found the movie really helped break up the Sunday blues. I think we will do it again next Sunday too! 

How was your weekend? Do you get the "Sunday blues" in your house too? How do you deal with it?