I had no clue what to expect for Sensorio. Some sort of light show, Fields of Light, the kids said. Found ourselves in a long queue at an extensive parking lot on the outskirts of Paso Robles, CA, sun going down rapidly around 4:30 pm. Tickets on line, conferring special VIP status, had been sold out, but we plebeians were assured the box office still held plenty. At $50 a person, no less.

The mood was excited, families with frolicking kids, not perturbed by the security checks once the line got moving, with the list of prohibited items long, yet guns unmentioned when knives and pepper spray were. Eventually you walked up to a compound with food carts (bringing your own food and water strictly forbidden less commerce suffers!), a stage with live piano music similar to that heard in airport departure lounges or Nordstrom’s lingerie departments. With dusk descending, open fire places warmed the revelers across that public square.

Our walk around a looped path through an undulating landscape (shaped to large extent by man, as I later learned, to maximize visual/spatial effects for these 15 acres originally meant to be a golf course) began with stellar views of dark silhouettes of oak trees against a setting sun, sky beautiful with ever deepening pastels.

I was simultaneously amused and irritated, a state that seems to arise more and more frequently as I age. Maybe we are allowed a set amount of tolerance across our life time and if dished out generously early, you find yourself with limited supplies in later years. In any case, I certainly did not join in the chorus of adulation found in all of the reviews I subsequently read, LA Times, The Smithsonian and The Guardian included – instead I had to fight the overwhelming urge to point out that we were surrounded by fields of colorless sperms. 100.000 of them, if we believe the artist’s website regarding numbers, glass bulbs linked to light sources sticking out of the ground and connected by optic fiber cables that reminded of a web of blood vessels, sending them on their journey. I was grinning inanely, while keeping my mouth shut to respect the sensibilities of my adult kids.

The views soon shifted into something entirely different, when the spheres on their stems began to glow in ever changing colors, morphing in slow rhythm from pink to purple, red to blue to green, with patches of one color bordering on multiple different ones – sort of your artificial tulip farm. I happily gave in to the pull of light and color, associated with our traditional attempts to brighten the dark time of year, or our human desire for spectacle – for that it was. A true spectacle transforming the land, and practically every last person documenting this technological bloom with their iPhone visibly in hand, a shaping of these masses into visual clones, yours truly included.

It WAS pretty. It was also bordering on Kitsch. A passage came to mind from a book I recently devoured and will probably recommend here soon: Trust by Hernan Diaz. (And no, I am not quoting by heart, had to go back and look it up…)

“Kitsch. A copy that is so proud of how it comes close to the original that it believes there is more worth in this closeness than in the originality itself. …Imposture of feeling over actual emotion; sentimentality over sentiment…Kitsch is always a form of inverted Platonism, prizing imitation over archetype. And in every case, it’s related to inflation of aesthetic value, as seen in the worst kind of kitsch: “classy” kitsch. Solemn, ornamental, grand. Ostentatiously, arrogantly announcing its divorce from authenticity.”

The artist responsible for the installation is British/Australian Bruce Munro who specializes in vast, immersive light formations, with a now famous track record of international successful exhibitions. What little I read about and from him, he would be perfectly amenable to having his work called anything you want, spectacle included, as long as it serves its function: encouraging a shared experience reminding of nature among the visitors. Seems like a decent soul. He got he idea originally during a visit to the desert; multiple of these installations can now be found across the globe.

“In 1992, journeying to Uluru through the Red Desert in central Australia, Munro felt a compelling connection to the energy, heat and brightness of the  desert landscape, which he recorded in his ever present sketchbooks. Field of Light is the embodiment of this experience.  Munro recalls “I wanted to create an illuminated field of stems that, like the dormant seed in a dry desert, would burst into bloom at dusk with gentle rhythms of light under a blazing blanket of stars”.

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First installed in 2019 as a temporary exhibition, the Paso Robles show has now become a permanent feature of the region. And in celebration of that region which is known for its wine production, an additional part has been added to the original fields: a compound of towers, comprised of 17,000 locally sourced wine bottles that are lit with morphing colors as well, each column looking like a gaudy crystal prism dropped from some giant’s chandelier.

The reference to the trade of the region is no singularity – there has been an emerging trend among vintners, vineyards and tourism agencies to add art to the repertoire of other offerings to attract visitors. The NYT called it the Vine Art Movement -” a coterie of art entertainments at wineries and related establishments seeking to infuse culture into viticulture.” Some have serious art collections, some commission work of contemporary artists (several of the fiber artists I interviewed this summer had commissions for fiber installations at wineries across the country,) many elevate local artists with rotating exhibitions of photographs or paintings (full disclosure: I have shown at wineries as well.) (The NYT link above provides more detail.)

While walking among those towers we were blasted with music that sure sounded like Ladysmith Black Mombaza, offering stirring African a capella melodies, but we remained totally bereft of clues to the choice in this context. When I searched for information about the music, I learned that originally there was a piece for 11 voices commissioned from Orlando Gough, a terrific contemporary British composer, to be looped electronically or occasionally presented live with 69 singers. When I listened to what was available on his website referenced to the Sensorio spectacle, it did not sound like what we heard on site. No explanatory information provided anywhere else.

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I think what got me was the sight of an owl silently gliding away from the trees, fleeing the lights. The cost of light pollution to birds and insects is high (I wrote about it previously here). And a global wave of light art, ubiquitous particularly during the darker months of the year highlights – pun intended – the way we usurp nature, abolishing what exists for the shape we want to enjoy, imposing our desire for spectacle, however artful, onto those who will be dispersed or endangered. We are true agents of the Anthropocene in this regard, part of humanity that feels free to interfere with nature at will. The interaction of art, technology and nature, celebrated by so many, does produce beauty, no question. Cui bono comes to mind in this context, though, who profits, eventually?

What is the price and paid by whom?

Music today is an older album by Gough, Message from the Border.