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ART & DESIGN / PROFILE
Cylinder II was displayed at the Hayward Gallery in London in 2012, using white LEDs, mirror finishes and stainless steel to create a stunnigly evocative effect.
Villareal’s design was careful to be respect- ful of the bridge’s architecture and impres- sive natural setting, while ensuring that his design was not lost amid the splendour of the atmosphere, instead he aimed simply to create something that allowed people to see the bridge in a new way. Titled simply “The Bay Lights” the light presentation is comprised of non-repeat- ing light patterns and algorithms on the western span of the bridge that offer an interpretation of the evening at hand, be it the traffic patterns, the weather, or simply the buzz that sometimes can be felt emitting from a lively and thriving city like San Francisco.
It was decided that the best lighting tech- nology to use for the project was the Philips Color Kinetics eW Flex SLX in a 4200 Kelvin correlated colour temperature, a product chosen because it was thought best suited to dealing with the sometimes turbulent weather patterns found in San Francisco bay. The Philips Color Kinetics eW Flex was also chosen because of the ease it could be fitted onto the bridge, utilising 48,000 bridge clips, and the range of program- mable and date features offered. The eW Flex is a versatile strand of individually controllable nodes, which use three wires, two for power and a third for data. Philips Color Kinetics worked closely with the artist to help him achieve his aims. Extra spacing was created between the nodes to accommodate Villareal’s design plan.
Nearly 4.5 miles of product was installed on the bridge, which is roughly equal to the total length of the structure, counting both spans.
The lights use 150 to 175 kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy while operating for seven hours a night, from dusk until 2am and the the light show is expected to reamin in place for the next two years. The lights will also use 85 percent less energy that other non-LED light sources that could have been used in the Bay Lights project and to further compliment the the project’s already impresive environmental zeal, solar panels are also used to power the lighting design.
It has been calculated that the design, production and installation of the display has cost in the region of $8 million, with only $11,000 being required to power the display year by year. Both of these figures are dwarfed by the 100 million dollars the Californian Department of Transport has estimated will be injected into the San Franciscan economy by the presence of the lights and the two million people who are expected to view them during the project’s life. What is more the ‘Bay Lights’ have been entirely publicly funded, with the necessary money being raised by dona- tion. Illuminate the Arts, a non-for profit organisation dedicated to the creation and presentation of community-activating public art, and the company behind the Bay Bridge project, has operated a number of
innovative fundraising schemes which have encouraged potential patrons to ‘give a gift of light’ and name an LED after a loved one, organisation or cause. So far $6.3 mil- lion has been raised enabling the installa- tion, with a further $1.7 million needed to fund the entire project on schedule. The use of computer programming to create a light show featuring an enumer- able amount of patterns and sequences is a theme common to Villareal’s work. Also in 2012, the year the Bay Bridge project came to fruition the artist’s Cylinder II was displayed at the Hayward Gallery in London. The work is comprised of 19,600 white LEDs that hang down from the ceiling and shimmer like the tentacles of a jellyfish caught in the moonlight. That is just one interpretation of course; the strings act to create a kind of theatrical backcloth, the curtain at the back of old Victorian theatres that would be repainted with each production. The strings form the matrix of a being, which produces endlessly changing evocations, as if the silvery veins that give this artwork form represent a visible cloud of memory, which is randomly throwing out snippets of the life it has been severed from, the viewer witnessing an endless medley of meteor showers, fireworks, fall- ing snow and clouds of swarming fireflies. There is no story to speak off, no narrative to express, these are just random recollec- tions thrown up in the moment. Reflective rods arranged in concentric cir-
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