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Sharjah Light Festival: Swan drone show, projections on mountain to create immersive experience

This year, Sharjah Mosque will be a mix of traditional and modern in terms of content creation as visitors will see a lot of abstract effects

Sharjah Light Festival, which will be held across 12 places from February 7 to 18, will feature some unique technologies and experiences for the visitors including a swan drone show.

Mounir Harbaoui, managing director, Artabesk, said they’re taking care of four locations – Sharjah Mosque, Dibba Mosque, Hamriya Souq and Rafisah Dam – in mapping projections and and creating immersive colourful projections on the buildings.

“We proposed a few places to the Sharjah government and then they selected the places before we started working on it,” he said, adding that international artists and designers from Serbia, Russia, the UK, France and Germany were taking part in the campaign.

“Rafisah Dam will be different this time. We will still do projections on the mountain, but bring in a drone swan show on the water of Rafisah Dam. There will be 12 swans that will do a belle and will be synchronised on water." he said, adding that the visitors would love it.

This year, Harbaoui added, Sharjah Mosque will be a mix of traditional and modern in terms of content creation as visitors will see a lot of abstract effects.

The French national said they started working on the project many months before. For example, the process for selection started six months ago because mapping doesn’t work in some places and work on creativity around two months ago. It used 37,000 luminous projectors on the four sites.

In addition to four locations in Sharjah City, Dr Khalid Al Midfa, chairman of Sharjah Media City (Shams), said the light festival will be showcased in Al Hamriya, Khorfakkan, Dibba Hissan, Kalba and others.

“Each location will give the visitors a different experience and memory that will last forever. Fifteen international artists participated in creating this amazing artwork and video mapping of iconic buildings in Sharjah. We hope that all the visitors from UAE and abroad enjoy their time,” said Dr Khalid Al Midfa, chairman of Sharjah Media City (Shams).

In an interview with Khaleej Times, he said every location is unique as it is something new in terms of artwork, technology and immersive experiences, audio, visual and video mapping on the emirate’s iconic buildings.

Meanwhile, Sharjah Light Village will open its door to visitors on February 1 and will close on February 18.

“Sharjah has a lot of unique architecture and a lot of details on these buildings. It was a challenge for the artists and it took us almost one year to set up and create this content. The Light Village is a great value addition to the festival as it is growing every year. We have 55 small and medium enterprises taking part in the Light Village, which offers many immersive experiences. Some are paid and some are free. This festival suits people of all age groups,” he added.

Last year, 190,000 people visited the Light Village, located near University City, for 18 days. It is estimated that 1.3 million people visited the Light Festival across different locations. “We expect to have higher visitor numbers this year, especially to Light Village because of new experiences. We also doubled our investments,” he said, adding that they’re also planning to bring local Emirati artists to give a local and Arab flavour to the festival.

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