2015 will be filled with light festivals, light and art, physics courses, lectures, astronomy, astrophysics, street lighting as part of the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies 2015. This year was proclaimed by the United Nations to raise global awareness about light-based technologies, to promote sustainable development and to provide solutions to global challenges in energy, education, agriculture and health.
The Opening Ceremony on 19-20 January 2015, in Paris, has been organised with the support of the EU-funded initiative LIGHT2015. It introduced all the key themes of the year, and will aim to inspire activities and events worldwide for the following 12 months. At the launch, Nobel Prize Laureates (Serge Haroche, Zhores Alferov, Ahmed Zewail, Steven Chu, William D. Phillips) as well as scientists on quantum optics, optical technologies and biophotonics and other high level political and scientific participants addressed themes such as energy and climate change and life and light.
Events are taking place throughout the year all over the world. In particular, the European Commission has invested €2.85 million in 3 projects (GoPhoton! LIGHT2015 and Photonics4All) to organise activities to help people understand the central role of light in science and culture and for our global future.
– In cities and university campuses all over Europe; light and photonics weeks and LIGHT talk events
– On your phone: Smartphone apps to trigger interest in light technologies: the applications use the camera of phone terminals to capture meaningful changes in the light, such as the redness in the skin or even the heart rate
– In classrooms: A Photonics kit with five experiments (e.g. boat driven by solar energy; measuring the light spectrum from a light bulb; etc.) for workshops with youngsters, team events, children universities and workshops for teachers to adopt the use of ‘photonics explorer’
– For businesses and industry to stimulate entrepreneurship in photonics and to support startup companies
This will culminate in September coinciding with the IYL2015 Weekend of Light around the 2015 lunar eclipse (26-27 September) with events including a Europe-wide experiment to measure aerosol in the air.
«SkyLight – a Global Science Opera»
«SkyLight – a Global Science Opera» is an ICT-based international creative education project within the Write a Science Opera (WASO) initiative and the EU Comenius Project CREAT-IT – Implementing Creative Startegies into Science Teaching. «SkyLight» has been endorsed by the International Astronomical Union (www.iau.org) as an official project of the International Year of Light 2015.
During 2015, students from schools in 28 countries within the Galileo Teacher Training Programme (http://www.galileoteachers.org/) will collaborate to create and perform a Science Opera inspired by Cosmic Light together via ICT tools, providing a platform for both creative science learning as well as cross-border friendship and cooperation.
During «SkyLight», pupils from the various countries (see list below) will participate in a Science Opera by two distinct methods, with approximately half the countries participating by each method: Light (participating through the ICOE app (www.ICOE.dk) deveoped by the Royal Danish Opera and the Malmø Opera) and Sound (participating through performance of music on various instruments).
The performance of «SkyLight» will take place in the 28 involved countries simultaneously in October, 2015 to coincide with the final conference of the CREAT-IT project (www.creatit-project.eu).
In «SkyLight» an innovative tool for collective and realtime impact will be used. It’s called Opus Lux and it is an application for smartphones and tablets. Opus Lux enables you to express the emotional impact, that the music or experience has on you and send the expressions back to the eventspace or concert-hall as color signals. Opus Lux is a collaborative tool that enables the audience to make a collective, realtime impact at a concert -or any event- beyond mere applauding and cheering. It is done by collecting feedback from the audience and transforming it into an augmented layer that expands the concert experience.
More info: http://www.light2015.org/





