Get your funk on at Artsplosure

Artsplosure, the outdoor art and music festival, turns 31 this year. Held Saturday and Sunday at Moore Square Park, it will have its usual mix of an art market, Kidsplosure (with a chance to make kites and funky birds), music (from local hip-hop to Brooklyn-based funk band The Pimps of Joytime to the New Orleans rhythms of The Iguanas), and good old street food.

This year, there's something extra special: the debut of Mirazozo, a nearly 6,000-square- foot luminarium from the Architects of Air consortium. Never heard of a luminarium? It's an inflatable structure of translucent vinyl made of tunnels and domes. Levity III, a nearly 10,000-square-foot luminarium, was in Artsplosure's 2008 Art on the Edge series.

That Raleigh gets to debut this work is "spectacular good timing," says Architects of Air member Shanti Freed. "We had such a warm welcome last time we were glad to come back."

Levity III could be described as a psychedelic, mood-soothing chamber; Mirazozo is different. The structure has illuminated seams, rather than large areas of color, that create a weblike effect on the interior.

"Each different sculpture has its own character," he says. "And the mood changes depending on the different times of day, depending on space occupied, and on light of day."

Trust me: The experience is hard to describe but very cool.

Best of all, Freed says, the luminarium is made for everyone; it's even wheelchair accessible. It will be at City Plaza on Fayetteville Street. "We want families to look at it in a wondrous kind of way," she says.