SINGAPORE - Enthralling light art installations will adorn the Marina Bay waterfront and Esplanade Park next month (in March 2018), when sustainable light art festival i Light Marina Bay returns.

The three-week festival, now in its sixth edition, will showcase 22 light art installations from Singapore and 13 other countries, such as Spain and Thailand, to encourage sustainability and recycling.

Organised by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), the event will also host a series of exciting activities around Marina Bay for the public.

At a media conference on Tuesday (on Feb 6), it was revealed that three installations featured will be created using used bottles and containers contributed by the community and corporate partners.

One of them, titled Transistable Plastic, will be located under the Esplanade Bridge. This large-scale installation is created using multiple panels encased with plastic waste. The artwork by Spanish creative collective Luzinterruptus aims to promote awareness of the amount of waste we generate in our lives.

The artwork requires the use of about 20,000 PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles contributed by the public and corporate organisations. So far, 15,000 bottles have been collected.

They will then be vacuum-packed and arranged to form rows of illuminated rotating panels which the public can walk through during the festival.

There will also be works by local artists. Milk Bottle Cows by Singapore-based artist BP Loh, for example, is created using some 2,000 plastic milk bottles to create a set of cute cows.

Loh, 40, said: "My artwork was first created in 2008 and this is the first time that it is displayed in a public space. I was inspired by the grass in open courtyards, as well as the milk bottles found in my studio's pantry. I want the artwork to be based on a sustainable design and hope it promotes recycling and upcycling among viewers."

Among the installations are six artworks by students from local institutions, including Nanyang Polytechnic, Nanyang Technological University, Raffles College of Higher Education, School of the Arts and Lasalle College of the Arts.

The line-up was curated by a panel of professionals and practitioners in the arts, architecture, urban planning and lighting fields.

As in last year, the festival will collaborate with overseas light art festivals. Selected local and international light art installations will be shared with Scottsdale's Canal Convergence in the United States, the Bella Skyway Festival in Poland and Lux Light Festival in New Zealand.

This year's edition will see greater participation from the community, with an umbrella of initiatives to encourage festivalgoers to adopt sustainable habits in their daily lives.

For instance, there will be a series of public talks and workshops on sustainability. And, held in conjunction with the festival will be a Switch Off, Turn Up campaign, which will rally corporate organisations around Marina Bay and beyond to switch off non-essential lighting and turn up their air-conditioning temperatures to save energy.

Festivalgoers can also look forward to myriad activities held across four festival hubs.

For example, the Art-Zoo Inflatable Park, an imaginative play garden, will return to the festival at The Float@Marina Bay. This park will feature a new line-up of characters for the young and young at heart to enjoy, and ticketing details can be found at www.artzooworld.com.

On the final weekend of the festival, The Promontory will also be transformed into a neon-coloured playground to host the Illumi Fest Run where participants will be splashed with glow-in-the-dark water as they go through various activity zones.

At a media conference on Tuesday (Feb 6), the festival's director, Mr Jason Chen, 48, who is URA's director for place management, said: "i Light Marina Bay has grown to become one of Singapore's signature events, gathering people from all walks of life and bringing greater vibrancy to the precinct."