600 tons of ice turned into works of art at the festival "Snow and Ice in Moscow"

The art of ice sculpture and the possibilities of modern media technologies will create a New Year mood for Muscovites and guests of the capital. Within the framework of the project "Winter in Moscow" on December 25, parks and squares of the city will be decorated with new art objects of the festival "Snow and Ice in Moscow". This year's works are united by the theme of a modern fairy tale and the magic of technology.

"At the festival "Snow and Ice in Moscow" the capital's parks and squares will be decorated with new art objects - sculptures, ice works of art, supplemented with interactive elements and light installations. More than 30 participants from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tatarstan, Tula, Murmansk regions, Khabarovsk Krai and other regions of Russia, as well as from Belarus and Uzbekistan worked on them", - said Alexey Fursin, Minister of the Moscow Government, Head of the Department of Culture of Moscow.

Light, interactive installations and ice sculptures will be placed in 10 popular places of Muscovites' recreation, including Museon Art Park, Gorky Park, Chistoprudny Boulevard, Sokolniki, Bauman Garden, Izmailovsky Park and others. The works will reflect different aspects of Russian culture - from traditional crafts to architectural masterpieces and literary works.

Especially for the festival 600 tons of ice were delivered to the capital. The ideal material for the sculptures - in terms of ice thickness and transparency - was found on lakes in the Chelyabinsk region. Artists created a New Year's fairy tale in Moscow's parks from thousands of crystal blocks.

The main attraction point for families with children this winter will be one of the most complex and the largest object of the festival - "Ice Castle of Wonders" with multilevel slides in Museon Park. In Sokolniki you can see the embodiment of the project "Architecture in Ice": sculptures of the Bolshoi Theater, the Moscow Planetarium, the Bolshoi Moscow State Circus, the Tretyakov Gallery and the Moscow Zoo will be placed here. On Chistoprudny Boulevard, guests will be able to see the compositions of the project "Frozen Pages" based on the famous fairy tales "The Snow Queen", "The Nutcracker", "Twelve Months", and "Morozko". In Novopushkinsky Square the project "Ice Film" will tell the history of Russian cinematography. In the Bauman Garden, ice blocks turned into a harp, piano, drum, trumpet and cello. Special sensors will make these instruments interactive, and visitors will be able to perform their own ice symphony on them.

The magical connection between art and innovation and interactivity has become a feature of the festival this winter: some of the art objects are created with the help of light and media technologies.

For example, the light and sound installation "Snow Ballet" on the territory of the museum-reserve "Tsaritsyno" turns snowfall into a graceful dance. The "Interactive Star" art object with the height of a two-story house in the park "Khodynskoe Pole" will react to passers-by and change the colors of its glow and melody. Lovers will surely want to be photographed against the background of the huge shimmering installation "Hearts of Moscow" at the skating rink in Gorky Park. The seven-meter shining ball of the installation "Rhythm of the Sun", supplemented with a neural network, will not only inform about what is happening on the surface of this star in real time, but will also fill the long winter evenings in the capital with warmth and magic.

The festival "Snow and Ice in Moscow" is held in the capital for the third time. In the first season, guests watched the work of ice sculptors in real time and then voted for their favorite works. The main feature of the second festival was a five-level ice slide with sights of ancient and modern Moscow. This year's works are united by the theme of a modern fairy tale and the magic of technology.

You can see the works of the participants of the festival "Snow and Ice in Moscow" until January 20, 2025.