Leeds Light Night: Seb Lee-Delisle

22-24 October 2020

Leeds Light Night is a festival that fills the city every year, however due to the pandemic the festival could not take place. However over a series of days we started noticing strange lasers in the sky which led to Leeds Laser City. The skies were filled with lights, colour and a unison of sparkling and dancing lights. The installation was created by the winning BAFTA artist Seb Lee-Delisle with 25 lasers in Leeds. What I liked about this event is that it was corona friendly as members of the public could control the lasers from their phones and members of the public that currently have to stay at home could witness the lights from their homes too. You could change the shape, pattern and colour of the lasers from your phone on the iconic buildings in Leeds including the Parkinsons building and the Merrion House.

Seb is a laser artist and presenter with a background in computer game coding. He uses computer to make large scale interactive laser light instalations to encourage interaction and playfulness from the public. He also has an ongoing mission to replace fireworks with lasers using PixelPyros which launched in 2012 and toured nationwide. I also really liked in lockdown how he projected messages of support towards the NHS and launched phone controlled lasers in Brighton to entertain those stuck at home too. This is a really interesting way of seeing how an artist has adapted his work due to the pandemic and used his work to bring people and communities together in the mids of a pandemic. The use of public interaction is also something I want to explore in my own project in the upcoming future.