BLINK's executive director wants people to explore and find what they like in this weekend’s art festival. Justin Brookhart has some things he’s really eager to see. Like the return of projection mapping on Music Hall.
“BLINK has never officially projection-mapped Music Hall. You have to date back to the years of Lumenocity, our predecessor, to do that. We decided this would be a great year to return to that beautiful and architecturally significant building.”
Brookhart says it won’t just be light sprayed onto the building, though.
“We’re going to illuminate the facade but you’ll have some light that's coming back off the building as well, too. We’re illuminating the Rose window,” he says. “We wanted to make sure that we were offering our biggest canvas and kind of our most significant building to multiple artists.”
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Four different artist teams — two from Cincinnati, one from France, and one from Australia — have all contributed to a 30-minute long show.
“I’m excited about the return of our drone show. We have a new drone show this year. We have two shows all four nights of BLINK, at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.,” he says. “That was a big hit for us in 2022 so we have some fun things that we’re doing to return that this year.”
The drone show will feature 500 drones flying in formation over the Ohio River, next to the Roebling Suspension Bridge.
In that same area is Supernova, which Brookhart says is a laser bridge of light. “It’ll be a first-of-its-kind installation this year. We’ve never done anything quite like this. We’ve lit up the Roebling Bridge before. We’ve done some fun things. We’ll be creating kind of a rainbow bridge of light that will span the Ohio River. It should be a can’t miss experience.”
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Brookhart says more than 950 artists applied for a spot in BLINK. About 80 were accepted. He says at the last event in 2022, there were only 250 submissions.
“There’s so much to see at BLINK. I know there’s an urge to see everything, to rush around the city. It is only four nights,” he says. “But take a minute, pause, reflect. Plant your feet, really take in the work that these folks have put together. Because I think what you’ll see is an incredible spectacle of light and art and technology, and just an immense amount of creativity and passion for this work.”
