The festival of light in St. Petersburg attracted 400 thousand spectators

The culmination of the festivities on the Day of National Unity was the Festival of Light, which was held in St. Petersburg on November 4 and 5 at the initiative of the Committee for Tourism Development of St. Petersburg and with the support of the Government of St. Petersburg. On St. Isaac’s and Senate Squares, residents and guests of the city were shown multimedia 3D-mapping shows and laser installations. The protagonist of 3D video performances on the revitalized facades of the architectural masterpieces of St. Isaac’s Square was the brilliant Petersburg - its fate and history, its legends and images, its soul and memory. Spectators of the Festival of Light became more than 400 thousand people.

The projection show “Revived History” on the facade of St. Isaac’s Cathedral was prepared and presented by the team of the City Advertising Center and a group of video engineers led by Alexei Shishkov and the Lasermaster company. Lighting artists - Andrei Fishbein and Nikita Kamenev. The sound producer of the project is Sergey Yakovitsky. On the facade of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, viewers saw 12 short stories with the most interesting symbols of the city on the Neva - the images of the heroes of the works of Dostoevsky and Gogol, the creation of the Russian fleet, the construction of the cathedral, the Romanov dynasty were successfully interspersed with paintings of the seasons and 3D light paintings that turned the cathedral into a fabulous building. In creating a 3D projection on St. Isaac’s Cathedral, dynamic lighting devices and architectural lighting were used - in total over 200 units, as well as 30 multimedia projectors with a capacity of at least 20,000 lm.

For the light show at St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the music of the St. Petersburg cellist Sofi was used. A member of the GCRR team, which also provides laser illumination of the facade of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, was the creative space LUMIER-HALL.

The author and developer of the 3D-mapping show "Space between Heaven and Neva" on the facade of the Mariinsky Palace was the creative group DANCE OPEN. The director of the project is Ekaterina Galanova, the scriptwriters are Daria Donova and Elena Gorshkova, the music editor is Antonina Koroleva, the music director and author of the musical score is Anton Tanonov.

The focus of the creators of the video performance was the spiritual phenomenon of St. Petersburg: myths and episodes of living history, the memory of generations in which all the most important was intertwined and captured. The audience saw how the legendary eagle descended from the mazes of time on the banks of the Neva, and how the City of Petrov was erected. The facade of the Mariinsky Palace waltzed in a whirlwind of worldly balls, it was absorbed by the dark elements of the Neva in the flood of 1824, in the snowy glow of the full moon the sphinxes and other mystical guards of the city came to life, the palace trembled and collapsed under the pressure of revolutionary force; dissolved in the golden glow of the penitent angel on the spire of Petropavlovka, disappeared in the ominous darkness of the winter blockade night and returned to life again in the spring in the Summer Garden, the May rain, the open windows of St. Petersburg communal apartments, courtyards with overturned skies, autumn fall foliage and an era of change…

The creation of 3D-mapping graphics on the facade of the Mariinsky Palace was carried out by the partner of DANCE OPEN, the Cosmo AV agency (France). The creativity of this creative laboratory is known to the St. Petersburg audience through a joint project of DANCE OPEN and Cosmo AV - 3D-mapping video performance “The Hermitage. Ball of History ”, shown on the facade of the General Staff building in December 2014 in honor of the 250th anniversary of the State Hermitage Museum.

In addition to the bright footage, the authors of mapping on the facade of the Mariinsky Palace paid special attention to the musical score, consisting of fragments of classical works of different eras and styles - Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Schnittke, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert. Two evenings on Isaakievskaya Square during the shows of the show “The Space Between Heaven and Neva”, verses by A. Pushkin, V. Mayakovsky, A. Akhmatova, N. Gumilyov, O. Mandelstam performed by People’s Artist of the Russian Federation Nikolai Burov and the Russian theater actress were sung. movie and dubbing by Anna Geller. The brightness of the picture was provided by more than 30 projectors with a luminous flux of 20,000 lm each.

Buildings of architectural ensembles of St. Isaac’s and Senate Squares, as well as a monument to Nicholas I and the Bronze Horseman were also involved in the light laser show of the Festival of Light.

On November 4 and 5, from 8 p.m. to midnight, the facades of St. Isaac’s Cathedral and the Mariinsky Palace 3D-mapping video performances were broadcast alternately - 8 sessions of each show during the evening.