عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Varieties

Festival of Light and Art 'Noor Riyadh 2023' Returns in November

The festival will illuminate Riyadh with large-scale light art installations, building projections, performances, and more. SPA
The festival will illuminate Riyadh with large-scale light art installations, building projections, performances, and more. SPA
TT
TT

Festival of Light and Art 'Noor Riyadh 2023' Returns in November

The festival will illuminate Riyadh with large-scale light art installations, building projections, performances, and more. SPA
The festival will illuminate Riyadh with large-scale light art installations, building projections, performances, and more. SPA

Noor Riyadh, the largest light art festival in the world, will return in its third edition in Riyadh, from November 30 to December 16 with an associated exhibition to be held from November 30 to March 2.

The festival will illuminate Riyadh with large-scale light art installations, building projections, performances, and more. Artworks will be displayed in public spaces across five hubs.

Curated by Jérôme Sans (Lead Curator), Pedro Alonzo, Alaa Tarabzouni, and Fahad Bin Naif (Curators), the festival’s theme is “The Bright Side of the Desert Moon” and will feature over 120 artworks by around 100 artists from more than 35 nationalities (more than 35 from Saudi Arabia).

Sans is the co-founder of Paris’ Palais de Tokyo, possessing an established career as curator of major biennials around the world and artistic director of prestigious institutions in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.

On the other hand, Boston-based Alonzo is currently an adjunct curator at Dallas Contemporary in Texas, and specializes in shows that go beyond museum walls. Riyadh-based Tarabzouni and Bin Naif are both artists and curators, with individual practices that utilize their architectural backgrounds to bring unique perspectives on urbanism and the built environment.

The festival’s exhibition “Refracting Identities, Shared Futures” will be held at the JAX District.

Neville Wakefield, formerly of MoMA PS1, Frieze Projects, and Desert X, returns to lead the curation of the show alongside Maya Al Athel, Curator, who served as artistic director of the festival in 2022.

Noor Riyadh 2023 will also feature over 500 community engagement programs for all visitors and families alike throughout the duration of the festival and the exhibition.

Minister of Culture, Board Member of the Royal Commission for Riyadh City, and Chairman of the Steering Committee for the Riyadh Art Program Prince Badr bin Farhan Al Saud said, “The participation of renowned global light artists in Noor Riyadh echoes our united vision. As we approach our third edition, we look forward to continuing Riyadh Art’s mission to turn the city into a dazzling gallery without walls and to ensure that art is for everyone."

Developed with the aim of nurturing local talent and amplifying Saudi Arabia’s cultural economy, Noor Riyadh is part of Riyadh Art, one of the largest public art initiatives in the world.

Riyadh Art aims to transform the Saudi capital into a “gallery without walls”, with more than 1,000 public art installations, to be spread out across the city through 10 programs and two annual events. Across its editions, Noor Riyadh has created unique moments of joy across the city and provided millions of visitors the opportunity to appreciate world-class light artworks and rediscover the city of Riyadh in a new light.

In 2022, Noor Riyadh celebrated multiple achievements, including welcoming 2.8 million visitors to the festival and winning six Guinness World Records, one of which being the largest celebration of light art in the world.

Most Viewed

 
 
Varieties

Images Show China Building Huge Fusion Research Facility

A satellite photo shows a new large-scale laser fusion research center in Mianyang, China. Courtesy of Planet Labs
A satellite photo shows a new large-scale laser fusion research center in Mianyang, China. Courtesy of Planet Labs
TT
TT

Images Show China Building Huge Fusion Research Facility

A satellite photo shows a new large-scale laser fusion research center in Mianyang, China. Courtesy of Planet Labs
A satellite photo shows a new large-scale laser fusion research center in Mianyang, China. Courtesy of Planet Labs

China appears to be building a large laser-ignited fusion research center in the southwestern city of Mianyang, experts at two analytical organisations say, a development that could aid nuclear weapons design and work exploring power generation.

Satellite photos show four outlying "arms" that will house laser bays, and a central experiment bay that will hold a target chamber containing hydrogen isotopes the powerful lasers will fuse together, producing energy, said Decker Eveleth, a researcher at US-based independent research organisation CNA Corp.

It is a similar layout to the $3.5 billion US National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Northern California, which in 2022 generated mceore energy from a fusion reaction than the lasers pumped into the target - "scientific breakeven".

Eveleth, who is working with analysts at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), estimates the experiment bay at the Chinese facility is about 50% bigger than the one at NIF, currently the world's largest.

The development has not been previously reported.

"Any country with an NIF-type facility can and probably will be increasing their confidence and improving existing weapons designs, and facilitating the design of future bomb designs without testing" the weapons themselves, said William Alberque, a nuclear policy analyst at the Henry L. Stimson Center.

China's foreign ministry referred Reuters questions to the "competent authority". China's Science and Technology Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

In November 2020, US arms control envoy Marshall Billingslea released satellite images he said showed China's buildup of nuclear weapons support facilities. It included images of Mianyang showing a cleared plot of land labeled "new research or production areas since 2010".

That plot is the site of the fusion research center, called the Laser Fusion Major Device Laboratory, according to construction documents that Eveleth shared with Reuters.

NUCLEAR TESTING

Igniting fusion fuel allows researchers to study how such reactions work and how they might one day create a clean power source using the universe's most plentiful resource, hydrogen. It also enables them to examine nuances of detonation that would otherwise require an explosive test.

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, of which both China and the United States are signatories, prohibits nuclear explosions in all environments.

Countries are allowed "subcritical" explosive tests, which do not create nuclear reactions. Laser fusion research, known as inertial confinement fusion, is also allowed.

Siegfried Hecker, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, another key US nuclear weapons research facility, said that with testing banned, subcritical and laser fusion experiments were crucial to maintaining the safety and reliability of the US nuclear arsenal.

But for countries that have not done many test detonations, he said - China has tested 45 nuclear weapons, compared with 1,054 for the United States - such experiments would be less valuable because they do not have a large data set as a base.

"I don't think it would make an enormous difference," Hecker said. "And so ... I'm not concerned about China getting ahead of us in terms of their nuclear facilities."

Other nuclear powers, such as France, the United Kingdom and Russia, also operate inertial confinement fusion facilities.

The size of those facilities reflects the amount of power designers estimate is needed to apply to the target to achieve ignition, said Omar Hurricane, chief scientist for the inertial confinement fusion programme at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which operates NIF.

"These days, I think you probably can build a facility that's of equal energy or even more energetic (than NIF) and a smaller footprint," Hurricane said. But, he added, at too small a scale, experimental fusion does not appear possible.

That other countries operate laser-driven fusion research centers is not a cause for alarm in itself, Hurricane said.

"It's kind of hard to stop scientific progress and hold information back," he said. "People can use science for different means and different ends, and that's a complicated question."