"Yah, right," I thought. "You just haven't found the art yet."

Sadly, she was kinda right.

I got to the festivities early—9:30-ish, and like many locals, chose the bike as the evening's transportation. My friends starting showing up around 10:30, thus beginning the Text Messaging nightmare (which we will get into later.)

At first things seemed promising: the info booth was stacked with Glow-ing paraphernalia, yes, including glow sticks and glowing necklaces, glowing yo-yos, and the like.

There were throngs of people, not yet hordes. They were admiring the view. There was a sense of energy and anticipation in the air.

I parked the bike, and headed down the Pacific Palisades overpass (with a few hundred other people) to the beach.

People were certainly in the spirit of things. (Certain people seemed to be on another plane altogether).

One woman lit up her feather boa.

Another guy channeled Tron.

There was the old light saber effect.

These guys were at the Downtown Art Walk, too. I just called their work, "Glowing Penis."

After trekking through the darkness, we came to a white, bubble-looking object that was, yes, glowing.

Inside, children were jumping up and down. I thought, "Don't they have these at raves and amusement parks?" Except there, they are called Moonwalks, not Art.

A few feet away towards the ocean, there stood a moving tent of balloons and a crowd of people gathered around what appeared to be a glowing cobra-like figure. Everyone stood around, transfixed.

Moving on, we headed toward the Pier, toward Usman Hague's project, "Primal Source."

On the way, we found an interactive piece, which was essentially candles in paper bags aligned in a curvy fashion. We were encouraged to move them around.

Another, more elaborate, interactive piece was Nova Jiang and Michael Kontopoulos's "Moon Theatre." It was a riff on the old throwing shadows on the wall game. I saw the results, quirky cartoonish figures projected on a circular screen, first.

Then, only after stumbling away from it did I realize the origins of the shapes—a round light box where people could throw shadows.
This was pretty cool.

Next, I stopped in front of Usman's piece—which was remarkable.

A giant spray of water that shimmered and shifted with different colors, the piece was the most noticeable of those at the beach. It also got more impressive as the crowds grew—because it was interactive and reacted to the sound— the colors would shift more dramatically later in the evening, when 44,000 (20,000 more than the organizers anticipated) turned up.

Glow could have used more pieces like this—and could have benefited from putting more of the pieces closer together and tying them together thematically.

After slogging my way through the sand, which is always deceptively physically exhausting, I arrived at a huge line waiting to get in to something that was underneath the pier.

I asked a couple of girls what everyone was waiting in line to see.

"Um, it's like, an art show, called Glow?" said, one girl, gum snapping, eyes rolling.

"Um, omigod, I know that, the whole beach is an art show, but what is the specific thing you are waiting for?"

She stared at me blankly.

I did not add, "like, duh," though, I should have.

It turned out they were all waiting like cattle to see Shih Chieh Huang's ultra cool collection of light sculptures, which can only be described as a bizarre combination of being alien, jellyfish, and insect-like in their appearance. They shifted and changed shapes, whirled and blew upwards, and turned inward. One even had a pair of LED-screen eyes. Unfortunately, my pictures of these awesome creations are total crap. Apologies.

Upstairs at the Pier, breakdancers cavorted under a projection screen to the hip hop and dancehall beats of KCRW's Garth Trinidad.

But good luck finding anyone in that crowd.

It was around this point when various friends started arriving, resulting in a Brechtian text messaging nightmare.

"This is confiding and weird."

"Pink balloons."

"OK. Meeting friends at DJ screen."

"Aborting. Crazy here. Going to find friends at DJ."

"If you're wearing a long skirt, we just passed each other on the sand. If not, you've got a doppelganger."

"I'm at the bottom of the stairs on the beach near there."

"We just arrived, is it just bits?"

"It's nuts, that's what I was saying."

"Man, there are an insane number of people here."

"Word has it they are shutting down the pier."

One hour later, with one friend found, we struggled to exit the masses of humanity. (We heard they shut down the pier and stopped the music way earlier than promised.)

But, first, we stopped for a look at the ocean, which had been roped off like we were in line at the world's largest VIP club.

Then we saw them: little tiny flopping, shiny fishes. Many, many fishes, flopping happily in the sand. It was the grunions themselves, on a grunion run! (No photos, so just close your eyes and imagine).

They kept inching over to us, ever so closely. We could almost touch them. Then some asswipe went running over the line to them and chased them, trying to catch one. And let me tell you those little fishes ran! They ran away from him, but then the asswipe caught one and raised his fist in victory. But he had chased all the grunions away. It was sad. So it was time to go away from Glow.

In the end, the most Glow-riffic thing about Glow was the Ferris Wheel, which you can see every night of the week.

So, I got on my bike and rode into the night.

Two years in the making, the fest will feature a broad range of artists and musicians, including four DJs from KCRW and the Dublab crew. In all, cultural affairs manager Jessica Cusick says there will be over “100 participating artists 4 countries, 24 locations, over 12 hours.” It’s either a “recipe for insanity or magnificence,” she says. We think it’ll be a bit of both. Our interview with Cusick continues after the jump.

Defamer: This is the first year of the festival, so I imagine that makes something like this even more difficult to produce.

Jessica Cusick: It is extremely difficult. There’s no pre-existing template for it. Producing this kind of event requires a lot of partnerships. It’s a huge collaboration, when you have to build those relationships for the first time, it’s challenging. The cliché that it takes a village— in this case it takes an entire city.

I only know of one other event like this in Paris —Nuit Blanche. Have you been?

I haven’t but Mark Paley, the artistic director has gone twice. We became aware of it in Paris and really thought they were doing very exciting things. At the same time, the city of Santa Monica we had just completed a cultural plan, and we were looking for a signature cultural event like Venice’s Biennale.

What’s unique to Glow is this idea, in addition to being a museum without walls that’s free and open to the public, is that every artwork is some way participatory. It’s not just about looking at art. It’s about changing the paradigm. Instead of just looking at it, you are in some way contributing to the experience. It’s what each of the artists is striving for at Glow.

What’s similar and what’s different than the event in Paris?

What’s similar is the idea that these are all original works of art created specifically for this event, placed in public setting. What’s different is our public setting is a unique natural environment—the beach in Santa Monica.

The emphasis is on iridescence and light —it’s called Glow because of the grunions. While we hope they will come that evening.. There is a possibility of grunion sighting, but it’s more symbolic of the mythology of grunions in Southern California and the symbolism of the wonderful second moment when everything starts to get an iridescent glow.

Any personal favorites? What’s a “must-see?”

A must-see is Primal Source by Usman Haque. He’s from London. He’s essentially creating a mirage on the beach, north of the pier that’s 40 feet tall and 150 feet wide. He’s using technology from theme parks, waterfall technology, projecting on it in a way that is interactive and responsive to the public. It’ll pick up people’s voices, it’ll interact and respond in imagery to that. My personal favorite spot is up in the Palisade Parks on Ocean Avenue. Artworks re in the park, but you can kind of see all the projects on the beach spread before you on the pier.

Why did you use a different name?

What we wanted to do make sure anything we were creating was authentic, genuine, and homegrown and we really wanted to both back the important precedent but we want to create something new.

Southern California has amazing artistic traditions. The space movement, the film industry, our artistic association in culture with light and the magic of light is very strong, we wanted something that was about here, about this place.

Another reason why we didn’t call it Nuit Blanche. Santa Monica is known for its work with the environment—several of the artists are creating works of art with environmental sides to them. Like Greenmeme—they are doing a project that they are calling Migration of the Marine Tumbleweed.

The tumbleweed it references is the huge vortex of plastic trash in Pacific Ocean. They are beautiful sculpture of recycled bottles with LED in them floating off the pier, as if they were migrating like tumbleweed.

It’s gonna be the kind of art event where everybody can have a new art experience and find something magical.

• Glow