30th May Light

Today finds me here in the Spain to tick off the first thing on my Camino bucket list before I actually start the walk. Arriving via the joy and comfort that is EasyJet crumple class, as the plane began it's final descent we flew along some of the route I shall be walking next week. A route that looked definitly 'lumpy'.

Journing into the city as darkness fell,  I caught my first glimpse of what I had come to see, its ghostly illuminated image rushing by the windows of the airport bus.

 I am here in Bilbao to visit the world famous Guggenheim museum of modern and contemporary art built by the architect Frank Gehry and opened to the public in 1997. 

It is one of four structures that fall under the Guggenheim umbrella including ones in Vienna, Abu Dhabi and the 1st one built just off Central Park in New York which I have visited in 2006.

From here I will then take a bus to the town of Irun which is approximatly 160km in the opposite direction to the one I shall be walking, Irun being the 'official' staring point of the Camino Del Norte which is the route I shall be walking this time.

Like the Sydney Opera House or the Pompidue Centre in Paris, the Guggenheim is perhaps unusual it that it has attracted far more attention and public interest due to its actual physical structure and design than it has by way of the exhibitions and events that have been held inside it. Visually striking it is at the same time both at one with and at odds to the urban riverside landscape it finds itself in

With an outer skin of titanium stretched over its curved surfaces of glass and limestone, the Guggenheim is itself a work of art, one that was designed to attract and play with light. And visiting it at different times of the day it certainly did that.

As I entered at my designated time slot, it was supposed to coincided with 'quite hour', not that the children running about (or their parents), or several adults seemed to be aware of that.

Having said earlier that the Guggenheim is perhaps better known for its outside rather than events held there, and to be honest some of the exhibitions did look as if they had been brought home from Play School to be stuck on the fridge, an exception to that was the superb instalation currently in situ. It was simply jaw dropping.

Refik Anadol is an internationally renowned date artist ( I admit I had never heard of him) who works at the cutting edge of the interface between human creativity and the potential of machines. Anadol uses vast amounts of electronic coding data fed through 12 super computers to produce live, ever changing and transforming AI generated visual extraveganza based on Frank Gehry's works. 

It's almost as if we were looking inside Gehry's mind and thought processes as these kalaidescopic images were projected onto the walls of the building Gehry designed and created. From swirls of every changing colour, to blueprint  designs and architectural plans and a supply of what seemed  to be a 1000 different imaged that appeared,  disappeared abd flew out of the 360 degree screens it was eye popping.

Words don't really capture the experience which was such an utter sensory overload, utterly mesmerising and beautiful that an hour just disappeared in the blink of an eye. 

So here is a little Youtube video clip to give you some idea of what I immersed myself in earlier today. Just magical.