088
ART & DESIGN / PROFILE
Leo Villareal’s Buckyball inspired by the Buckminsterfullerene, a carbon particle instrumental in the creation of life on Earth, was installed in Madison Square Park in NYC in 2012.
them, with simple materials and basic know-how, and many did, from hippies in communes to the American Air Force. In “Your Private Sky”, one of his many books, Fuller said of his creations that he “built like nature builds,” and if you look at the cell like skin that forms a geodesic dome, you can’t help but think of those grainy images caught in microscopes of multiplying amoebas and protein shells, the Fibonacci sequence and patterns of DNA, the ingredients of life. It is fitting then that the renowned LED light artist Leo Villareal, who recently designed the largest light installation in history, The Bay Lights, on the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, is a devot- ed acolyte to the church of Fuller and has recently created a version of the geodesic dome, out of that other vital ingredient for life on earth, light.
The 30-foot tall illuminated sculpture features two nested geodesic spheres com- prised of 180 LED tubes arranged in a series of pentagons and hexagons. The sculpture, which emits a warming red glow, is lit by individual pixels located within the tubing and placed 1.2 inches apart. Each pixel is capable of displaying 16 million different colours, colours that can be directly con- trolled via Villareal’s laptop. Titled Buckyball the piece is a constant- ly changing light artwork, comprised of twenty hexagons and twelve pentagons
and is a recreation of the Buckminster- fullerene, a carbon particle that could well have provided the seeds for life on earth. When the particle was discovered in 1985 it was found to be similar in form to Fuller’s geodesic dome from decades previous and was named in his honour and has since been nicknamed the “Buckyball”. Villareal’s Buckyball was up until recent- ly installed in Manhattan’s airy Madi- son Square Park, where the sculpture’s constantly changing hues, combinations of colour programmed at random, lit up the park throughout the winter months. With benches placed strategically around the sculpture, spectators were invited to take a few moments to be both warmed by the light and hypnotised by its changes. The Buckyball itself sits upon a plinth, like a statue of old, this tiny particle magnified and highlighted for the role it plays in our continued existence, a park green statue surely just as equal to veneration as a George Washingon, a William Gladstone, or an Abraham Lincoln. Villareal has spent his career harnessing the multitude of creative options offered to an artist by LED, and his creation of a lighting design for the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, the Golden Gate’s lesser-known younger sister, is a case in point. The San Fran- cisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, which stretch- es from downtown San Francisco, over
Treasure Island and into Oakland, lacks the stirring terracotta red that marks out the Golden Gate against the seemingly constant blue of Frisco’s Pacific horizon, but it is just as graceful.
The project was conceived both to mark the bridge’s 75th birthday and to celebrate the re-opening of the structure’s eastern span, between Yerba Buena Island and San Francisco, after a comprehensive refit. It was also hoped that an eye-catching pro- ject with a large scope and an impressive look would win some attention away from the Golden Gate.
Eight times the size of the impressive light show that marked the centenary of the Eif- fel Tower the lights stretch 1.8 miles across and reach a height of 500 feet. The project is the world’s largest LED light sculpture and features 25,000 white LED lights that produce a never repeating, dazzling display, individually programmed by Leo Villareal. This vast project took the light artist nearly two and a half years to put togeth- er including six months creating a 3D and Photoshop rendering, an activity challeng- ing enough, but nowhere near as hazardous as the installation of the lights themselves, undertaken by a number of skilled techni- cians in possession of the necessary nimble coordination complimented by a steady head for heights, who worked through the night during the winter months of 2012.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150