San Francisco’s Bay Bridge will soon be the host for a new light sculpture designed by artist Leo Villareal.
The sculpture, called The Bay Lights, will bathe the Bay Bridge in 25,000 LEDs, each of which will be individually programmed to display a complex set of patterns and animations. $5.7 million has been raised so far for the project, which is costing approximately $8 million.
Ben Davis, chairman of Illuminate the Arts, commented:
“What happens is crews go up in the middle of the night and hang down the side of the bridge and attach up to 500 LEDs each evening, per shift. We’re over 10 percent complete, and we’re completely on track for a grand lighting ceremony.”
The light show will be running for at least two years, and has been commissioned for the bridge’s 75th anniversary.
Villareal has a number of permanent collections in museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum in Kagawa, Japan. Some of his most recent exhibitions include “Cosmos,” a sculpture containing almost 12,000 LEDs which is installed above the Johnson Museum’s Mallin Sculpture Court at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and “Multiverse,” which is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
The opening ceremony for the artist’s latest offering is set for March 5th this year, but until then you can view an artist’s rendering of the light show below:
(via KQED)
Image credit: Leo Villareal
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