8 Reasons Not to Miss Aurora 2015

In Dallas these days, there's no shortage of "can't miss" events. It's almost impossible to plan a weekend. Looking down a list of events to decide what to do with your weekend can be paralyzing. It's much easier to sit at home watching Netflix and waiting for your friends to tweet you which movies to catch or what play is worth the ticket price. You'll worry about that tomorrow. But from 7 p.m.-2 a.m. Friday, October 16, there won't be a tomorrow. There will only be you, the Arts District and Aurora: a huge outdoor event loaded with a stunning array of art that uses light and technology. 

For the first time, Aurora has a series of events leading up to the big night, including talks and complementary exhibitions. If you need more convincing, we sat down with Joshua King, a co-founder of the Aurora event, and he shared eight reasons you won't want to miss this year's bigger-than-ever event. Full schedule here. 
 
James Guerts: Periphery (above)
Stop and consider the spatial and visual boundaries of the world you are inhabiting at this very moment. Perhaps you are sitting in a cubicle, very aware of the tiny visible space around you, illuminated by fluorescent light. Perhaps you're reading this on a park bench and when you glance up the world seems as large as the plot of green grass in front of you. These are the kinds of boundaries, spatial and visual, that James Guerts is interested in subverting, or perhaps more accurately, accentuating, with his piece Periphery. You'll enter a scaffolding structure between two large yellow geometric brackets of light and consider where you fit within the piece and the world at large. 

Andreas Greiner: Toccata for Pyrocystis Fusiform
A piano will be played in a dark room inside the Cathedral Guadalupe. A collection of mono cellular algae will rest atop the piano strings , reacting to the music with bioluminescence — these organisms will light up in blue colors. 


DGDG, Slik Stockings, The Color Condition: Social Studies and Other To-Dos
Our favorite dance troupe, DGDG, collaborates with two of our other favorites — performance provocateurs Slik Stockings and decorative wizards The Color Condition — in a performative, video-heavy installation that will explore the natural cycle of seasonal festivals and the role of performance within those celebrations. If it sounds heady, you can be assured it will be fluid and colorful. 


Memo Atken: Simple Harmonic Motion
London-based artist Memo Atken wrote a memoir about growing up in Istanbul, which led to an interest in discovering how complexity is derived from simplicity. He employs this idea in his art by rhythmically repeating a simple idea until it becomes a larger, complicated piece.
Erica Felicella: Traveling to Together
The theme for this year's Aurora is "all together now." Performance artist Erica Felicella really digs into this idea with her interactive piece in which she combines media to bring everyone into the same space, face to face with the artist and with each other. All of her projects have themes of confrontation, vulnerability and catharsis. 

Niko Princen: In the Event of Fire
Want to blow out a candle in Amsterdam? Princen has finagled a contraption that uses Voice over IP to allow just such an event. Now the question is, who will be there to relight it?

Veronika Georgieva & Stephan Shanabrook: Memory Lane
Inspired by the description of an unfolding Japanese flower in Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, the artists requested images from anyone and everyone for the Memory Lane they will create during Aurora. Using this collective visual memory they will create an installation of photographs for visitors to walk through. 

3_search: Sense/Coalescene
If you were at Aurora two years ago, you might remember the jaw-dropping projections on the Wyly that seemed to architecturally transform the form of the building. The collaborative group 3_Search returns to once again take over the building with a complex mapping technology in which visuals will interact and respond to everything from opera vocals to the beats from a DJ.