Cleveland's star is burning pretty brightly these days, thanks in no small part to a string of good news regarding a certain political party’s national convention and a certain sports figure’s return. But it's about to get a little brighter. A new downtown festival will bring in nationally renowned artists during the Gay Games to create interactive light/video installations on the downtown malls.

The AHA! Festival is "a multi-day festival of lights celebrating Cleveland's recent development boom and will 'illuminate' changes to our urban landscape," according to the website. The event is scheduled to take place August 7-9. Public events will take place to engage Clevelanders and energize the city.

This week, Fresh Water caught up with several AHA! artists to preview the fest.

Public Auditorium 3D mapping: The artist collective Obscura Digital "will present a giant, digital light show on the outer walls of Public Auditorium using 3D video mapping," according to the website. The San Francisco-based studio uses unique software that allows artists to create animations and send them to one of several video projectors, covering the entire facade of a building.

"What we're trying to do is capture the essence of Cleveland in a poetic fashion," says Marc Melzer, Director of Media and Art with Obscura. "We wanted to capture the arts and culture and revitalization happening in the city."

The video installation will represent the metaphoric evolution of Cleveland by displaying the changing of the seasons from winter to spring, Melzer says. The team created the installation by visiting the site, selecting the building and then obtaining the architectural drawings. They recreated the building in a 3D virtual program and simulated their projections before creating the media.

Eight projectors will tie together in order to create one seamless image on the facade of the building. The projected image will be approximately 150 feet wide!

The Pool: Artist Jen Lewin's interactive work, which has been displayed all over the world, is coming to Cleveland. This large-scale installation "is an environment of giant, concentric circles created from interactive circular pads," according to the AHA! website. "By entering the pool, you enter a world where community play and collaborative movement create swirling effects of light and color. Imagine a giant canvas where you can paint and splash light collaboratively."

The Pool consists of 240 interactive platforms, each one three feet in diameter, which create unique patterns of color when you dance and move on them. Lewin refers to the platforms as being "like LED hula hoops." The installation requires over 30,000 interactive, controllable RGB LED pixels over 5,000 square feet.

"My work is usually very large and interactive, and it enables large groups of people to interact with art and themselves," says Lewin. "This creates a really active and engaged community experience around the artwork. This piece is twice as large as what we normally install, and we're testing a lot of new interaction control."

"What's amazing about the sculpture is that you can put it in any kind of public space," she adds. "It changes it. If you put it in a park that otherwise no one would go to, it changes it completely. It's extremely popular with kids and families."

Lewin builds every piece of her installations by hand in her studio in Boulder, Colorado.

From Cleveland, Lewin's piece will travel all over the world, including the Burning Man Festival, Portugal, Czech Republic and the United Kingdom.

Global Rainbow: This installation by artist Yvette Mattern "consists of seven parallel beams of laser light, representing the spectrum of the traditional seven colors of the rainbow, and is designed to be projected across large open sites," according to the website. "The Global Rainbow will be projecting the light beams from the Great Lakes Science Center over Mall B, into the sky. This spectacular rainbow will have the capacity to be seen from up to 36 miles away on a clear night! The colorful installation will be a dramatic and thought-provoking piece."

Mattern has noted that the Global Rainbow symbolizes hope and encompasses social and geographical diversity.

Drawing Lines: Artist Ivan Juarez's installation in the Eastman Reading Garden will also be featured during AHA!

Public events throughout the festival include Pecha Kucha, a large-scale yoga event called Believe in CLE, and the East Meets West Glow Ride.