THE only ticketed work for Illuminating York's tenth anniversary will be in the Museum Gardens, where you will not recognise night-time once the clocks go back.

For four nights from Wednesday to Saturday, the birds will be awake, the plants will be dancing, and all because international artists Mark Anderson, Jony Easterby and Ulf Pederson are moving in.

The Trophic Cascade trio will present Illuminati Botanica, transforming the ten acres of botanical gardens with a series of installations that will allow you to see and hear nature in a new light.

"Mark and I have been working together for over 20 years now and we've been working as trio with Ulf for ten years, having done a show called Powerplant that started as part of Liverpool's year as European City of Culture and toured the UK extensively, going to Australia, Honk Kong New Zealand with it too," says Jony.

"We then did a show last year called For The Birds, a similar lights- and-song thing at Ynishir's RSPB reserve in the Rhonda Valley in West Wales, the place that was used for the BBC's Springwatch for three years. That show's now going to the New Zealand Festival next year."

The invitation for Trophic Cascade to illuminate York came through Jony's association with Hazel Colquhoun, the 2015 festival's co-curator. "I've worked with Hazel on public art projects and did a project on the Wolds Way, near Malton, called Enclosure Rites, three years ago," he recalls. "Almost fancifully, I said to Hazel, 'if there's anything where you think our work might be appropriate in York, let us know'..."

She duly did and Illuminati Botanica is the result. "Hazel and Andrew [co-curator Andrew Knight] were very keen for us to come up and have a look at the site, so I came up to Museum Gardens about six or seven months ago," says Jony. "I met the garden staff and the curator of the gardens and we worked out what might be possible for Illuminating York from the portfolio of installations we already have, and how we could adapt them for Museum Gardens.

"What we wanted to celebrate was not the historic buildings but the flora, the fauna, the trees, the architectural landscape and the birds, so we're bringing all the pieces we can from last year's For The Birds, mixed with pieces from Powerplant."

Ulf Pederson, for example, will be using plant forms in his slide projections, while Jony utilises his collection of bonsai trees and dried plant forms to create a montage of plant shadows. "We'll also be using the shapes of the trees, as well as the Yorkshire Museum and St Mary's Abbey for projections and using trees to hang things from too. In a grove, we'll have 50 bird boxes all fitted with loudspeakers for a sound and light piece that'll then be going to New Zealand, based around the bellbird, one of the world's top ten songsters."

Electro-luminescent birds, fireflies, lapwings, Mark Anderson's kingfisher drones and the tapping of woodpeckers all will feature too and look out too for 32 Tweets, 32 British bird calls in ten-second soundbites that will "reflect the contemporary Twittersphere we live in".

What else might visitors see? "Cuckoo Whistles, but I'm going to leave that one as a surprise as I don't want to give everything away," says Jony.

Fact File

* Illuminating York will light up the city from Wednesday to Saturday, 6pm to 10pm.

* 2015 is the tenth anniversary of Illuminating York

* Over that time, the festival has commissioned more than 50 artworks in light for the city

* This is the first year that festival curators have been appointed: Hazel Colquhoun and Andrew Knight, of RKL Consultants

* Illuminating York is a member of Lighting Up The North, a network of seven light festivals in cities across northern England

* 50,000 people attend the festival every year

* The principal funder is Arts Council England, with further funding from ticketing and private sponsors

* Tickets for Illuminati Botanica (adults £6, under 16s £5, under fives free) are on sale at York Theatre Royal's De Grey Rooms box office, 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

* For more information, go to illuminatingyork.org

THE FESTIVAL PROMENADE

York Press:

Esther Rolinson's Flown in the York Mansion House passageway to the York Guildhall. Picture: Frank Dwyer

FOR the first time, Illuminating York is being programmed by two artistic directors, RKL Consultants' Hazel Colquhoun and Andrew Knight, who have conceived a Festival Promenade with installations created by five sets of artists along the route.
This walking trail will culminate in the Museum Gardens where York’s botanical gardens will be transformed by Trophic Cascade into Illuminati Botanica, as highlighted elsewhere on this page. Specially selected lamps in shop and business windows will feature along the route between the artworks.
Join The Revolution, in Shambles, is created by artist and design duo Freshwest, alias Marcus Beck and Simon Macre, whose reflected showers of light will stream from mirror balls throughout the medieval street.
Taking inspiration from the candle as a symbol and a beacon, artist Nayan Kulkarni’s Three Graces explores the concept of "one into many and many into one". Three churches, St Helen’s, All Saints, Pavement and St Michael le Belfrey, will become canvases for digital artworks, each using the image of the candle as its starting point. 
Shadowing, by Jonathan Chomko and Matthew Rosier, will invite passers-by to play with shadows at seven streetlights around the city. Each will be ingeniously modified, giving them a memory to allow them to record and playback the shadows of those who pass beneath. When visitors step out of the light for a while, the lamp will "begin to dream", recalling a procession of earlier visitors.
Suspended in the Mansion House passageway in St Helen's Square will be Flown, Esther Rolinson's cloud-like light installation that will hover above the audience, animated with delicate patterns of movement using hand-folded acrylic forms and a complex programme of LED lights. 
Now in its third year at Illuminating York, the SPARK programme will present two light artworks at York Guildhall, St Helen's Square, by two emerging University of York St John fine art graduates, who have received mentorship and support to help them develop their work.