SAN JOSE MCENERY CONVENTION CENTER

A renovation completed last month at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center included the installation of Soo-in Yang’s Idea Tree sculpture in front, where it serves as a gate- way to the expanded facility.

With the sculpture, city and convention center oficials were looking for a way to broaden the function of art at the center, according to Jennifer Easton, program lead for the city’s public art program. The goal was to create a dynamic, engaging experience for residents and visitors, while also communicating the spirit of San Jose, the capital of high-tech Silicon Valley. “High tech,” Easton said, “is really about the notion of innovation.”

The central element of Idea Tree is a canopy, 40 feet in diameter, covered with

polycarbonate leaves, which during the day will provide shade in sunny San Jose and at night will light up with pulsing colors. The sculpture includes an adjacent “sound booth” where visitors can leave short voice mes- sages — leaving traces of themselves behind — that will be mixed and reassembled to create a soundscape that’s audible to people who are standing beneath the sculpture. Yang himself describes it as an “ecology of ideas” — something that could be said about meetings and conferences themselves.

Like many of San Jose’s best-known exports, Idea Tree is a technological feat, but as Yang told the panel of experts who commissioned the work, the first requirement for the sculp- ture was that it be “must-see and magical.”