Santa Monica Glow is a free art festival that also takes place in another cities around the world, including the City of Lights -Paris, Toronto, Montréal, Rome, Brussels, Madrid and Riga as part of a global movement producing “white night” or “nuit blanche” events. 

One can stroll along Santa Monica Beach, the Santa Monica Pier and Palisades Park and discover over 20 original light installations, art displays and exhibits created by an array of local and international artists for an evening.

Lisa and I decided to eat vegan food at Real Food Daily, had drinks at the end of the pier at Mariasol, and then strolled along the beach and elsewhere to check out the light installations.

Left:  Santa Monica Pier just after sunset.

#4 exhibit Shapednoise (artist - Céleste Boursier-Mougenot). I'm going to let Consul France of Los Angeles describe this:

"A lifeguard tower  north of the pier will dissolve in a sea of foam as the evening progresses. Foam will fall along the structure from the roof down and collect at the base in a lined basin dug into the sand. A physical barrier will separate the audience from the foam. The foam will be produced according to signals that are picked up by four video cameras situated in the adjacent parking lot. The visual data will be translated into signals controlling the amount of foam that is produced and will also stimulate an audio response broadcast in speakers placed within the tower structure. The sound will be ambient and will be controlled by the artist throughout the event. During the course of the event the foam will accumulate and obscure the lifeguard tower and will also subside; like the tide, it will come and go."

#14 was one of the more fun interactive exhibits at Glow Santa Monica 2010. Glow Santa Monica described this exhibit by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer:

"Sandbox is a large-scale interactive installation that includes two small sandboxes where one can see live-feed tiny projections of people at the beach adjacent to the installation. As participants reach out to touch these small ghosts, a camera detects their hands and relays them live to two of the world’s brightest projectors, hanging from a boom lift and which project the hands over almost 8,000 square feet of beach. In this way people share three scales: the tiny sandbox images, the real human scale and the monstrous scale of special effects.

The project uses ominous infrared surveillance equipment not unlike what might be found at the US-Mexico border to track illegal immigrants, or at a shopping mall to track teenagers. These images are amplified by digital cinema projectors which create an animated topology over the beach, making tangible the asymmetric power inherent in technologies of amplification."

Day for Night (#15) by Corey Madden, Bruno Louchouarn and Keith Mitchell.  I personally love the impish nature of filming something in the exact location its shown, which was shown with some Enoesque music.  Glow Santa Monica describe the installation like this:

"Day for Night is a film shot from dawn until dusk at the exact location on Santa Monica Beach where it will be screened. Spanning 12 full hours, Day for Night mixes reality with fiction, theatrical and cinematic techniques, and uses both performers and the public to record an entire day at the beach. An original score was composed to accompany the film, which is otherwise silent. Day for Night will begin at 7:00pm and end at 6:44am and is the only project that will exceed the 3 AM closing of Glow.

http://web.mac.com/blouchou/iWeb/GLOW/home.ht"

I captured a photo of someone photographing the DNA sequencer with LED lights, the #17 exhibit by Synn Labs, as decribed by Glow Santa Monica:

"DNA Sequencer suspends LED lights within the historic Crescent Bay Park trellis to emulate the shape of a gargantuan DNA spiral. Each suspended LED is sensitive and responsive to the audience’s touch. As visitors progress through the spiral they will trigger both an audio element and changes in degrees of brightness of the LEDs creating a dynamic and ever-unique sequence of DNA chains."

Projecting films of pitbulls on to Hot Dog Stick...I always appreciate a sense of humor.

Hot Dog Stick by Yoshua Okón #12), as worded by Glow Santa Monica:

"Okón is filming an event of his own making with approximately 20 pitbulls and their owners to project onto the south-facing wall of Hot Dog on a Stick. Okón’s interest in working with small subcultures, in this case pitbulls and their owners, often leads to filmed events where staged action directed by the artist explores the tension between “fact” and “fiction” or in this case the line that separates a documentary from a feature film."
 

People experiencing the Carousel Concerts (#9).  Again, Glow Santa Monica will describe the exhibit:

"Six different groups perform one-hour sets on the carousel.

Daniel Corral — Accordion Orchestra
Joshua Beckman and Anthony McCann — reading John Giorno, Robert Lax, and the Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Eighteen Squared — Percussion Ensemble: works of minimalism
Chris Porter — Brass Ring: Live Carousel Music
Joshua Beckman — Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Aaron Drake — Hypnogogic Story time for Pseudo Automata: 6 channel sound laptop performance
Chris Kallmyer — sama / listening: 5 channel sound installation."