There’s something enchanting and almost other-worldly about nature at night time. While flowers may slumber, certain critters are at their most active, and moonlight can cast an eerie glow over plant life that makes the ordinary seem somehow extraordinary.
Add whiz-bang lighting, cutting-edge special effects and music – all courtesy of Canadian multi-media company Moment Factory – and the result is like nature on steroids.
Moment Factory is the company that brought the popular Light Cycles experience to the Botanic Garden during Illuminate Adelaide in 2021 and 2022, so expectations are understandably high for its new 1.7km night-time trail, Resonate, which creative director Gabriel Pontbriand says is “inspired by our human capacity for emotional and physical resonance with the environment”.
Unlike Light Cycles, which began at the Garden’s Ginkgo Gate, Resonate starts at the North Terrace entrance, where a noticeboard urges audiences to “awaken your senses, attune to nature”. A map highlights the six immersive experiences we will encounter across the self-guided walk: Beginnings, Transformations, Belonging, Winterings, Memories and Aliveness.
The first of these centres on a lake, where shards of light move above the water in a pattern choreographed to a pulsing soundtrack. They appear to emerge from the depths amid the hovering mist and reach into the sky before dissolving back into the water, eventually shooting back up like fireworks as the music intensifies.
Moment Factory’s Resonate in Adelaide Botanic Garden. Photo: Tyr Liang – Xplorer Studios
Transformations, one of the standout installations, takes place under the canopies of the Moreton Bay figs along Murdoch Avenue. As visitors walk beneath the towering trees bathed in a kaleidoscope of changing colours, a cacophony of percussive music builds like a gathering storm, the surround sound enveloping us in its beats like a nightclub DJ. Created in collaboration with Montreal folk quartet The Barr Brothers, and fusing musical composition with a range of sound effects, the soundscape throughout Resonate is an integral part of the experience, enhancing its immersive quality.
Further along, the single path diverges into several different tracks, all of which weave through a garden of pink and blue and green glowing “flowers” dotted across the grass. Belonging is an ethereal kind of space with colourful projections drawing us to different locations to watch imagery that appears like effervescent bubbles rising up from undulating sands.
There is a decent walk between each installation, which could build anticipation or impatience, depending on your mindset. But no one could be disappointed when they come to Winterings, which transforms the Bicentennial Conservatory into a kind of infinite magic forest, with the edges of the glass building invisible as visitors make their way across the elevated walkway amid palms and other rainforest plants bathed in green and blue light.
Perceptions of space and depth dissolve as we are transfixed by beams reaching down from above like friendly aliens, with the ethereal music enhancing the transcendental experience in the conservatory. This is one space in Resonate you’ll be reluctant to leave.
Resonate visitors in the Bicentennial Conservatory. Photo: Tyr Liang – Xplorer Studios
Further on, we encounter Memories, in which a large circle of chairs is arranged around a beacon of light that sways across the night sky. Here, visitors are encouraged to stop and “remember who still lights your way”, but it’s noticeable on this night that few people take the time to take a seat before moving on to the final experience, Aliveness. Here, an Afro-Celtic soundtrack plays as lights snake up a large tree like parasitic vines, bringing it to life with colours that dance across the trunk and branches in sync with the music. It’s a beautiful visual interpretation of sound, although it lacks the wow factor of the Palm House installation that marked the finale of Light Cycles.
It’s easy to become blasé about experiences such as this; audiences are conditioned to constantly expect more and more dramatic effects from multi-media events, and Resonate relies on a similar ethos and technology as Light Cycles, despite following a different trail. But for this reviewer, at least, the magic is just as strong.
The key to getting the most out of Resontate is to move slowly and spend sufficient time within the installations to fully absorb them and also appreciate the natural environment they seek to enhance. Enjoy the special effects, but also look beyond them: take in the reflections on the water, the earthy scent of the gardens, the glow of the moonlight, the underlying beauty of the night-time flora and fauna.
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On leaving Resonate and walking past Illuminate Adelaide’s Base Camp food and beverage area in Rundle Park, we noticed a couple of people looking up into a tree. There, blithely washing itself on a branch and ignoring the humans below, was a tiny possum – a reminder, if any was needed, that nature at night is pretty cool all by itself.
Resonate is in the Adelaide Botanic Garden until July 30 as part of Illuminate Adelaide.
Read more Illuminate Adelaide stories and reviews here.
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