In November, St. Isaac’s Square will host the Festival of Light 
Automatic translate
On November 4 and 5 at St. Isaac’s Square, St. Petersburg residents and city guests are waiting for multimedia 3D-mapping shows and laser installations of the Festival of Light, which is held in St. Petersburg on the initiative of the Committee for Tourism Development and with the support of the Government of St. Petersburg.
The project promises to embody the best European experience in lighting design and 3D-mapping technologies and turn the festival into a truly St. Petersburg brand with a special recognizable style that is in tune with the city traditions and the soul of the city. For two evenings, inspired by the work of geniuses of different eras, the directors of the show will offer each viewer to rediscover and fall in love with their Petersburg.
The festival announced itself with a presentation light show on the facade of the Alexandrinsky Theater last spring. The St. Isaac’s Square, chosen for the November multimedia action, complex in geometry and rich in architectural masterpieces, from the point of view of mapping, is not the easiest object. But the brighter the creative solutions proposed by artists. The main parties in the new 3D-presentation dedicated to the city, its grandeur and beauty, will be performed by St. Isaac’s Cathedral and the Mariinsky Palace. A number of buildings forming the architectural ensemble of the square will be involved in the show of light installations.
The opening of the Festival of Light will take place on November 4 at 20 hours. Video performances on the facades of the Mariinsky Palace and St. Isaac’s Cathedral will be broadcast every 20 minutes until 24.00.
The projection show "Revived History" at St. Isaac’s Cathedral will be devoted to the history of the formation of the image of St. Petersburg and the worldview of the townspeople. Viewers will see stories about the creation of the greatest monument of the spiritual culture of Russia, whose mission is truly unique.
The visual part of the projection on St. Isaac’s Cathedral and 3D-mapping shows were prepared by the team of the City Advertising Center and a group of video engineers led by Alexei Shishkov and the Lasermaster company, which has experience in organizing celebrations of light and fountains in Peterhof. Lighting artists - Andrei Fishbein and Nikita Kamenev. The sound producer of the project is Sergey Yakovitsky.
In creating a 3D projection on St. Isaac’s Cathedral, dynamic lighting devices and architectural lighting will be used - in total over 200 units, as well as 30 multimedia projectors with a capacity of at least 20,000 lm. Young Russian specialists in the field of advertising and multimedia programs were involved in the project.
The study of the spiritual phenomenon of St. Petersburg will offer the audience a 3D multimedia performance “The Space Between Heaven and Neva” on the building of the Mariinsky Palace, the author and developer of which is the DANCE OPEN creative group. 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 graphics for the 3D performance at the Mariinsky Palace are created by the partner of DANCE OPEN, the Cosmo AV agency (France), a recognized leader in the field of large-format video projections for world-class shows. The agency’s international projects are implemented under the leadership of creative directors Pierre-Yves Tulo and Jose Cristiani. Cosmo team owes its spectacle to the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games and the opening of the Paralympic Games in Sochi, the Moscow festival “Circle of Light” (2013, 2014). Petersburg audiences got acquainted with the work of this creative laboratory in December 2014 at the 3D-mapping show “Hermitage. Ball of History ”, a joint project of DANCE OPEN and Cosmo AV in honor of the 250th anniversary of the State Hermitage.
Within two evenings - November 4 and 5 - on the facade of the Mariinsky Palace, as on a screen, the St. Petersburg - Leningrad memory will come to life: myths and real events largely determined the fate of the country. Episodes of the performance - the legend of the foundation of the city and the eagle descending from heaven; the construction of the City of Petrov and the formation of Russia as a sea power; whirlwinds of high society balls; the dark element of the Neva and the flood of 1824; riddles of the sphinxes and ghostly lace fences; revolutionary aurora; the penitent angel on the spire of Peter and Paul and the black arrows of the blockade ring on the map of Leningrad; the ominous darkness of a winter siege night and an unbending will to live; spring in the Summer Garden and May rain; open windows of communal apartments, well-yards and puddles into which the sky falls; an era of change and autumn leaves underfoot…
So what creates a unique Petersburg atmosphere of creativity and freedom? Maybe the projection of our memory is a great, diverse and multi-layered cultural heritage, enclosed in a wonderful polyphony of voices, faces, images and ideas… If so, then the inevitable change of eras is just a shift of planes, each of which does not disappear without a trace, but invisibly is present and becomes the foundation for a breakthrough on a new day. However, everyone has their own answer to this question.
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.
Poems by A. Pushkin, V. Mayakovsky, A. Akhmatova, N. Gumilyov, O. Mandelstam performed by People’s Artist of the Russian Federation Nikolai Burov and Russian theater, film and dubbing actress Anna Geller will combine the musical and figurative narrative into a single multifaceted text that sets a high, almost mystical degree of spirituality and will introduce the viewer to the magic of St. Petersburg.
The brightness of the picture will be provided by more than 30 projectors with a luminous flux of 20,000 lm each.
On November 4 and 5, from 20. 00 to 24. 00 on St. Isaac’s Square, 3D-mapping sessions on the facades of the Mariinsky Palace and St. Isaac’s Cathedral will be broadcast every 20 minutes.
Free admission.
Increased security measures will ensure the comfort of spectators in the conditions of free attendance of a mass event in the evening.