Winter lights

After a day of organising at home, we set off for Canary Wharf, where it's time for the Winter Light festival again. It's an annual event that celebrates winter with a display of interactive and artistic light installations. We headed out early, intending to arrive just as it got dark.  Our route took us via the Elizabeth Line, and we exited at Crossrail Place, just the right location to go to the top floor to start our trail with a piece called Artificial Humans by the Belgium artistic collective, Atelier Haute Cuisine.

The artists used the AI image generation tool DALL-E to create a concept for the installation, exploring AI's growing influence in art. Many light festivals now use AI-generated images in concept submissions, where text prompts are interpreted into visual designs.

The resulting artwork combines AI's conceptual image with real-world techniques. It features lifelike but cold figures of humans hunched over, gazing downward, symbolising a critique of modern life. Interestingly, the AI omitted phones from the figures' hands, so perhaps it's not yet smart enough to understand. The warm, glowing figures are said to reflect the detachment and coldness of modern existence, raising questions about whether human warmth still comes from connection or if we are becoming isolated in a world dominated by devices.

We spent a couple of hours wandering the exhibits. I think we started with the best and most intriguing, although I did like most of them. What surprised us was the number of people who were out and about on a cold Saturday night in Canary Wharf.

While we were wandering the area, we tried to buy either a swede or turnip because, when we returned home, we had a haggis to cook in honour of Burns Night. There were no stocks of turnips anywhere, although PY eventually found some in a pre-made mash in our local Co-op. The haggis was delicious. We ended the evening by finishing the last drops from a bottle of whisky and watching Burns Night entrainment on television.

Previously: Earth