View story at worcestermag.com
By Meg Trogolo
Photo: Fractal Tribe
Years ago, during the days when the Fractal Tribe art collective ran its own music venue in Worcester, fans would come to see their favorite artists, but stay for the glowing hieroglyphs that lit up the walls.
“We made our own font and wrote a bunch of important values we thought people should live by, and we never translated them. They just glowed and kept people in their curiosity,” Fractal Tribe artist Rob Lumbra said. “You’d see people come to a concert, spend all night trying to translate it, and leave with no answer.”
When the venue closed in 2018, Fractal Tribe kept the panels that housed the hieroglyphs and the lights, and now those phrases will take a different form as the “Pillars of Monumental Truth” art installation, which will be the center of attention on the Worcester Common.
The four artists that make up the collective are recycling the panels into two obelisks that will stand 20 feet tall during the Festival Of Lights and throughout the winter, and this time, there is a translation — eight, in fact, one for each of Worcester’s most commonly spoken non-English languages.
The “Pillars of Monumental Truth” get their name from the 12 philosophical phrases that cover them, including “A person should always strive for honesty and integrity in all their interactions” and “A person should always respect the environment and strive to leave a positive impact on the world.”
Breaking language barriers
Lumbra said in front of each obelisk will be a sign bearing a QR code, which anyone walking through the Common can scan using a smartphone. The QR code will lead to a webpage where observers can read each phrase in Worcester’s nine most common languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Albanian, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Twi and French.
“I hope people take the time to look at the art and scan it, resonate with it and the fact that we translated it into the eight most commonly used languages in Worcester, and that this art will represent some really good values that unify people and help them lead a more fulfilling, positive life,” Lumbra said.
In addition to the “Pillars of Monumental Truth,” Fractal Tribe will have another art installation on display not far from the Worcester Common during the Festival of Lights.
“Illuminaciones,” a series of concentric squares lit up in bright, changing colors, was originally built by Boston artist Zebbler in 2019. It appeared prominently as part of last year’s Festival Of Lights, right next to the Worcester Common Oval ice skating rink.
‘It’s a gift of friendship’
This year, Fractal Tribe will suspend it from the bridge that connects Mercantile Center and its neighboring parking garage, at an angle where patrons of the Mercantile restaurant can see it from window-side tables.
“Over the summer, (Zebbler) gifted it to us because we’re an event organization as well as an art production company to display at our events and give it a second life,” Lumbra said. “It’s a gift of friendship. He passed that on to us to make sure the art continued to be shown and shared in the public eye.”
Fractal Tribe artist Tovia Shapiro said although the collective had a music venue in Worcester and has been based in the city for almost its entire existence, the four artists, who do much of their work at music festivals throughout the Northeast, hope this year’s Festival Of Lights is the start of a deeper connection with the local community.
“We’ve been headquartered here since 2011 and most of our work has not been within the city,” Shapiro said. “Being able to produce art that is accessible, meaningful and outside City Hall, very much a symbol of our city, that people can come and interact with for the whole holiday period, is pretty special.”