Dear Brothers and Sister, it is time to rejoice! Finally, the heretical antics of LUMA have been reprimanded, by the big kahuna upstairs! The Friday and Saturday before last, the LUMA Projection Arts Festival was made sufficiently soggy to send a message to its Lucifer-loving organizers.
After all, there is no greater affront to our Holy Papa in the sky than setting buildings alight with… light. Their modern day Tower of Babel was rained out both days, if only for a few blessed hours.
“I had fallen to my knees, feeling as though our efforts were in vain,” said Mrs. Helvetica Burns, leader of the local Anti-LUMA group, Mothers Against Displays of the Arts, also known as MADA. “But I raised my head, and like mana from heaven, our Lord rained down rain, to wash away these sinners.”
Burns continued on her rant, describing how the organizers of LUMA were going to regret their affronts to both God and Science. “I mean, come on, how does light do that?! It just doesn’t make silly little wraps around our city’s splendid architecture naturally. It’s the mark of the Devil, I tell you.”
Participants at the festival were less overjoyed, however. Representatives for local mental health awareness groups (https://www.gobroomecounty.com/mh https://mhast.org/ https://www.binghamton.edu/hpps/mental-health/index.html ) were dissatisfied that they could no longer make chalk drawings on the pavement. One disappointed teen volunteer said, “Where am I going to create my pentagrams now?”
Despite hours of the torrential downpours, the projectors were kept dry through the finest technology available today: tarps. Like the story of Noah, a grand display of color followed horrific levels of flooding. The projectors lit up, the smell of brimstone filled the air, and pretty lights illuminated the buildings.
Installations of all kinds were found there, from a rotating golden tree, to a scene that can only be described by someone on too many substances. One particularly interesting one was pictures projected onto some hanging laundry. As the artist put it, “My art was definitely completed and definitely not a last minute combination of my various procrastinated projects of clothes washing and art.” (In all seriousness though, it was cool).
MADA demonstrators bemoaned one particular display as being a pagan ritual, as it ended with a person made out of a tree. As Burns put it, “Why didn’t we steal that one yet! We could have made at least a two day holiday out of it!”
In spite of the sinfulness of it all, this reporter must admit that the show was quite beautiful, like a man-made Aurora Borealis, which was a nice surprise at this time of year, at that time of night, in this part of the country, localized entirely within downtown Binghamton. Don’t tell MADA this, but this reporter will certainly be stopping by next year.