Prague’s City Center Sparkles, Buzzes, and Burns at the Signal Festival

And thanks to a reference in Dan Brown’s new novel, The secret of secretsAs the festival gained more global recognition. Just a few weeks after the release of Brown’s new best-selling novel set in contemporary Prague, viewers got to see what drew the celebrated writer to the festival, the largest exhibition of digital art in the Czech Republic and Central Europe. In one clip, the Signal Festival makes a cameo appearance when the protagonist remembers attending an event in the 2024 version.

“We are happy about it,” festival director Martin Busta says of this gesture. “It’s a kind of confession.” Not that the event needs hype, even in one of the most anticipated narratives of recent years. Organizers have not yet announced the number of visitors to the festival this year, but the four-day event usually attracts half a million visitors.

On the last day, there was a long line in front of the huge facility The rise of Tristan by American video art pioneer Bill Viola before opening in the evening, although it was a ticketed event. In the Church of St. Salvatore in the Monastery of St. Agnes, visitors can watch a Christ-like figure rise to the top, with gravity-defying streams of water flowing with him, all displayed on a huge screen.

The first show of the festival was held on the Vltava River near the Dvořák Dam. Peppercorns Interactive Media Art in Taiwan made a presentation on a cloud of fog called Zolkin light. While creators of other light installations have to deal with the challenges of buildings—their irregular surfaces, decorative details, and bizarre friezes—projection onto water drops presents a different kind of challenge as artists are forced to relinquish control of the resulting image. The shape and depth of Peppercorns’ work depends on the wind at any given moment, which determines how much of the scene is revealed to viewers and how much simply blows away. However, the reward was an exceptional 3D view reminiscent of 3D, something that cannot be achieved using video projections on static, flat buildings.

Another premiere event was a display on the tower of the Old Town Hall, created for the festival by Italian studio mammasONica. He transformed the 230-foot-tall structure into a kaleidoscope of blue, green, red and white roofs. A short distance away, in Place de la République, Peppercorns had another installation. On a circular LED installation, they displayed a work titled Between mountains and seaswhich narrated the history of Taiwan.