Asbury Park’s Paramount Theatre became a canvas of sorts for digital artists from around the world who projected animated images set to music onto the iconic theater. Six award-winning digital artists from Hungary, Ukraine, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and the United States debuted “original works of animated storytelling, creating the illusion that the Paramount Theatre’s architecture is physically transforming.
The event was held to “reimagine the relationship between art, technology, and our collective human story.,”
“We’re all in this together. This is our collective story. Let’s tell it,” said event host, PolyOne founder and Asbury Park resident Shawn Emamjomeh during a recent interview at The Art of the Bean and Leaf coffee shop on Cookman Avenue in Asbury. “I believe all art tells a story.”
Emamjomeh, who co-hosted the event with Joshua Bernard of LUMA, hopes to make this festival an annual tradition. He grew up in Iran and later moved with his family to California in the late 1970s. His father was Iranian and his mother was American. Emamjomeh is a former Broadway actor and producer/investor in many award-winning Broadway shows, including Book of Mormon, Driving Miss Daisy with James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights, Green Day’s American Idiot, and a revival of West Side Story.
He later worked in real estate as a partner in the international division of the Claremont Group in Iraqi Kurdistan during the war with ISIS. “That was a very challenging time to be there,” he recalled. While in Iraq, Emamjomeh spear-headed the construction of The Atlantic Villas and Apartments in Erbil. It is a residential community of more than 1,500 houses and apartments. The complex also has schools, a health clinic, and a commercial center.
It was in Iraq that Emamjomeh, who through his knowledge of the creator economy and the power of stories, formed PolyOne and the Color & Light Festival “as a way to give back and connect us through the power of tech, arts, economy, and collective impact,” the release said. PolyOne, the release continued, was announced from the ancient Citadel of Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Citadel is a UNESCO World Heritage Site dubbed the “oldest continually inhabited city” and the “Cradle of Civilization”.
Emamjomeh has travelled extensively and has lived in many places on the planet. “The world is very small to me,” he said. “At the end of the day, my view is, we’re all one.” In fact, he continued, that’s what PolyOne means — out of many, one. That’s the message he hopes to coney through the inclusive, family-friendly light festival. “It takes all our colors to achieve light,” he said.
The festival included local food vendors in addition to an array of artists selling and showcasing their creations. The Color & Light Festival, presented by digital art platform PolyOne in collaboration with the LUMA Projection Arts Festival took place on Friday (March 21) and Saturday (March 22) in Bradley Park.
