The 'Light Nights' International Festival of Light and Media Art in Gatchina (Leningrad Region) is announcing an open call for participation in 2024. We are inviting teams and artists working with video mapping, digital art, light and multimedia objects. Project concepts are to include work with light, architectural mapping, neural networks, augmented reality and other innovative technologies, and be in line with the festival theme. We are interested in immersive, site-specific objects that initiate a dialog with the landscape or the cultural and historical context of the Gatchina Museum-Reserve.

The Festival Open Call goes out to media artists, architects, lighting design specialists, theater stage designers, as well as sound artists, composers, IT experts and technologists regardless of their age and place of residence. Applications should contain the artist's/team's portfolio, a brief description of the project, sketches, basic technical specifications and a cost estimate for creating the work. The terms of cooperation will be discussed individually with each applicant depending on the scale and technical complexity of their Application. Accommodation will be provided for non-resident participants. About 20 artists or teams will take part in the Festival.

Man as the center of any philosophical system cannot be reduced to a specific concept. To describe one's nature, we need an endless list of qualities and characteristics, contradictory ones at times: altruistic and selfish, sociable and lonely, moral and immoral. What is the essence of Man as such? What makes up Man's inner world? Philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, even biologists tackle this question by exploring Man through interactions with others and the world. The team of the 'Light Nights' Festival in Gatchina is asking the participants of its new season the same question and is open to the widest interpretations possible. What is the mechanism and source of our self-awareness? Be it artificial technologies, nature or human relationships: where will this search lead us and how far we can take it. Will technology defeat us? How does anthropocentrism coexist with environmental ethics? Why in an attempt to answer the question of "What it means to be human?" the most selfish creature on Earth looks at itself through the eyes of others?

We want the Festival audience to remember how important it is to see every person as a human being and what lies behind it. We are inviting artists to think about what the analysis of the human image in artistic culture has come to using light and media art. If the Ancient Greeks had the possibility of contemplating human nature using modern technologies, what would we have instead of sculptures?

The format of the Festival is an immersive nighttime journey through the exposition in the Gatchina Palace Park. Over the course of three nights in August, the public is treated to light and multimedia objects, 3D mappings onto the Gatchina Palace and small architectural forms of the park, and performances. The idea to hold night events at the Gatchina Park belongs to Vassily Pankratov, Director of the Gatchina Museum-Reserve. The concept of the Festival was formulated and developed by its Director, Olga Arshanskaya.