Paris City Hall’s anamorphic garden designed by land artist François Abelanet.

These spectacular light installations by Bruce Munro can be seen in the Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania through September 29, 2012. 

About the project:

Wander through a field of light reminiscent of flowers, discover a meadow of glowing towers changing hues, and delight in a shower of cascading raindrops fashioned from delicate lights as you are immersed in a new and truly unique garden experience. Both indoors and outdoors, by day and by night, Light will change the way you see gardens.

As if that wasn’t enough, they’re also hosting a wide range of activities including SmART Nights where you can “hear some of the region’s brightest minds explore the science of light, then share your own bright ideas in an audience-participation StorySlam facilitated by First Person Arts”.

Lauren Fenterstock’s project Third Nature 

Fenterstock on her work:

The Third Nature series was inspired by my fascination with an obscure tool called a Claude Glass. Allegedly developed by renowned painter Claude Lorain, this black convex mirror was used by artists to reflect landscapes. The dark color and curved surface of the glass reduced unnecessary detail and squeezed a complex view into a neat composition. The Claude Glass caught on just as the British were reshaping their landscape into the Picturesque style. Tourists strolling through the countryside in search of picture perfect views would use these mirrors to capture the image of nature as a momentary work of art. Here, landscape is manipulated to look like a painting; the earth becoming an expression of man’s view of nature rather than man’s true experience of nature. History, decay, and disorder are all potent tricks of the picturesque gardener, giving way to a knowingly melodramatic visual array. It is telling that we call these views scenery. Like a stage set, the picturesque garden was created as a site for the dramatic display of human experience.

Open to the public only one day a year, the Garden of Cosmic Speculation takes science and maths as its inspiration. Quite simply, there isn’t another garden like it in the world.

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