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Field Of Light: A Glowing Arts Project Comes To Australia's Sacred Uluru Rock

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Deep in the Outback of Australia’s Northern Territory, the sacred and celebrated red monolith of Uluru is stunning enough. Now, with his Field of Light installation composed of 50,000 soft, colorful lights, artist Bruce Munro has given one of the world’s most breathtaking landscapes an ethereal transformation.

Some 50,00o "stems" make up the Field of Light.—Courtesy Mark Pickthall

A quarter-century ago, Munro fell in love with Uluru while camping at the site formerly called Ayers Rock. Known today principally for his light-based installations, Munro back then sketched an idea “that kept on nagging at me...I saw in my mind a landscape of illuminated stems that, like the dormant seed in a dry desert, quietly wait until darkness falls, under a blazing blanket of southern stars, to bloom with gentle rhythms of light.”

And bloom they do. In full view of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta UNESCO World Heritage Site, Munro’s 50,000 stems, which are topped by frosted-glass spheres, cover an area the size of four soccer fields within Ayers Rock Resort lands. Juiced by solar power, the bulbs are illuminated via optical fibers which seem to snake willy–nilly around 236 miles-worth of pathways that draw visitors into the heart of the vast terrain.

The Field of Light before nightfall.—Courtesy Mark Pickthall

Like most arid landscapes, Uluru and its surroundings appear to many a newcomer as desolate. In fact, it is an area rich in flora and fauna which supports vital tree life such as Australia's signature mulga species. Technically grand as it may be, Field of Light also serves as a breathtakingly simple discovery of this panoramic slice of the Outback for all who walk its paths. 

The ephemeral mood plays differently on each guest, with many describing the sinuous cables' nighttime effect as clumps of neurons, or the pulsing lights as synapses firing. For Munro, it's where concepts of time are “inextricably linked to a significant past, present and future.” In their Pitjantjatjara language, local Aborigines for their part have called the project Tili Wiru Tijuta Nyakutjaku, or "looking at lots of beautiful lights.” 

The Field of Light and its optical fibers in detail.—Courtesy Mark Pickthall

Requiring many weeks of volunteer work to set up, the project was developed under the auspices of Voyages Indigenous Tourism Australia, the tourism management group belonging to the Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC). For Qantas Freight, it was a technological feat in itself that required 32 flights over six weeks to get 15 tons of lights and equipment from London to Alice Springs, some 300 miles from the rock. As the cables will be recycled for other installations, the entire ensemble will be freighted back to the UK when the installation’s time has come to an end at the end of March 2017.

The Field of Light concept has wowed Munro fans for more than a decade in numerous distinctive iterations, sites among which have been the Victoria and Albert Museum; the Eden Project of bio-domes in Cornwall, England; Atlanta, Nashville, Houston and other cities in the States.

The Field of Light—eery and soothing at once.—Courtesy Mark Pickthall

In Phoenix and Scottsdale over the last year, Munro's Desert Radiance work consisted of four separate mixed media projects employing geodesic domes, PET bottles, and optical fibers. The Sonoran Light at Desert Botanical Garden installation was made up of fifty-eight glowing "water towers" which were constructed out of more than 200 bottles that change colors via fiber optics.

Pennsylvania’s Longwood Gardens are known for their giant waterlilies. A few years ago, Munro added an installation there that was inspired in part by the Georgia O’Keeffe painting Sky Above Clouds IV. Made out of thousands of recycled CDs, the project mirrored the ever-changing hues of the surrounding landscape.

Earlier this year in the foyer of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum for art and archaeology, the London-born, Bristol University fine arts graduate created Impression–Time Crossing Culture, a piece whose 12 spheres hang from the ceiling and cast images onto the floor.

And now at Uluru, whose stunning features are matched by few environments anywhere in the world, Munro has seriously upped the ante in his great illumination stakes.

Several different packages are available for viewing the Uluru-based Field of Light which will be mounted until the end of March 2017. The US$26 Field of Light Pass includes return bus transfers to the site. At $56, the Star Pass includes sparkling wine and canapés at a special viewing area at the end of the evening. The 4 1/2-hour, $174 package called A Night at Field of Light includes an introduction to the artwork by a host, and sparkling wine and canapés at sunset from an elevated viewing area. Guests are given extended time to immerse themselves in the installation before enjoying a three-course buffet dinner that features local "bush tucker" recipes. 

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