Dune, by Daan Roosegaarde of the Netherlands, is a light installation that interacts with viewers. (Studio Roosegaarde)Nuit Blanche will be a night to rock 'n' roll for some participants in Toronto's all-night art extravaganza this October.

Music producer Daniel Lanois is set to produce a multimedia installation at Nathan Phillips Square, and other exhibits will incorporate music by John Cage, Bruce Springsteen and Kraftwerk.

Anthony Kiendl, one of four curators who commissioned projects for Nuit Blanche, has set up his zone with a variety of experiences that explore how art and popular music create "some of our most inspired, passionate and widely appreciated cultural moments."

"It seems like a very accessible or interesting way for the public at large to embrace the artwork," Kiendl, director of the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art in Winnipeg, told CBC News. "It's interesting how throughout the history of art artists are interested in music or play in bands while they're going to art school."

Later That Night at the Drive-In is a video, sound and light installation by music producer Daniel Lanois. (Adam CK Vollick/Nuit Blanche)He asked Hamilton-raised Lanois, currently recovering from a motorcycle accident in Los Angeles, to create Later That Night at the Drive-In, which includes video work by a range of artists along with a soundtrack of new music. Lanois's accident is not expected to stall the project, Kiendl said.

Light work

Dan Graham, a New York artist known for his mirrored cubicle installations, is building a new work that he promises will recreate the quasi-hallucinogenic effects of rock show light displays.

And Dave Dyment, a Toronto artist who previously curated a Nuit Blanche zone, plans to slow down a rock musical so it is performed, with a live string quartet, over a 12-hour period.

Toronto released a list of the more than 130 projects being created for Nuit Blanche on Wednesday. The fifth version of the event is scheduled for the night of Oct. 2.

The city plans to close Yonge Street from Bloor to Front Street for the event, and many of the exhibits will be concentrated around the Yonge corridor.

Nuit Blanche has become a victim of its own success, drawing in excess of a million people in past years, prompting complaints about long lineups to see the art.

Some artists with international profiles, including Paris-based Agnès Winter, who will project hundreds of portraits of smiling people on the side of the Holt Renfrew Centre, have been invited to this year's festival.

Dune deal

Daan Roosegaarde, from Rotterdam in the Netherlands, brings one of his most famous installations, Dune, a light display that reacts to human presence, to the Lower Bay station, a disused subway stop opened for special events.

Roosegaarde is one of many Nuit Blanche artists working with light: Philip Beesley, selected as Canada's entry to the 2010 Venice Biennale in architecture, is creating a forest of light at the Royal Conservatory of Music, and Montreal artist Nadine Faraj etches with light on a dark-painted shop window.

Ephemera is an acrylic on glass etching by Nadine Faraj of Montreal. (Michael Flomen)"Everything about light fascinates me," Faraj told CBC News. "You can look at it from a spiritual perspective as a force of life on earth — we talk about the sun and light reflecting off the moon which fascinates everybody, right down to the deer caught in the headlights."

She added: "I wanted to find a way to translate the intimacy of drawing on a large scale that was suitable for public viewing."

Sandra Rechico, a Toronto artist, plans to recreate the shore of Lake Ontario circa 1850 at the foot of Yonge Street, using a haze of blue lights. "Because Nuit Blanche is about the city, I wanted to create a spectacle that comes from the history of the city," she said.

Invitation to dance

Other works range from the large-scale — a plan to transport the Weston Flea Market to a Yonge Street alleyway — to the intimate — Los Angeles artist Kianga Ford's Dance with Me, in which people are invited to dance with the artist.

Other notable projects:

• Julia Loktev's I Cried for You, a video installation in which actors demonstrate their ability to cry on cue.
• Davide Balula's The Endless Pace, in which 60 dancers represent the face of a clock over the course of 12 hours.
• A group exhibit at Ryerson Theatre that recreates a collaboration between artist Marcel Duchamp and musician John Cage.
• Mark Laliberté's False Kraftwerk, a recreation of a performance by the German electronic band involving four puppet-like figures.

Nuit Blanche runs from dusk on Oct. 2 to dawn on Oct. 3.