San Francisco turns a bridge into art with 25,000 lights
San Francisco's lesser-known bridge unveiled a new look
Tuesday night. As part of a unique art project celebrating its 75th
anniversary, the West span of the Bay Bridge has been outfitted with 25,000 LED
lights that will display a variety of undulating designs nightly for the next
two years.
Organizers say it is the world's largest light sculpture.
"Light has a very universal quality, almost anyone
can see it and have some response to it. It's operating on a very primal
level," said artist Leo Villareal, who has been working on the project for
the past two and a half years. He says his goal with the Bay Bridge
installation was to create a "digital campfire."
The utilitarian grey bridge cuts a striking figure in the
bay and transports 250,000 cars a day, but it has never been a tourist
attraction like the nearby Golden Gate bridge. The Bay Bridge, which opened
just six months before the Golden Gate in November 1936, can't compete with its
neighbor's iconic touches: epic views, vivid orange paint job and art deco
detailing.
San Francisco officials hope the Bay Lights project will
change that perception and boost tourism to the area. They estimate 50 million
people will see the lights, and that the influx of tourists over the next two
years will generate $97 million for the local economy. The project's overall
cost is $8 million, $6 million of which has already been raised by organizers.
The Bay Bridge lights will fire up nightly at dusk and
turn off at 2 a.m. every night until 2015. The energy-efficient lights cost $30
a night to power for those seven hours.
Villareal, who has works the Museum of Modern Art in New
York CIty and the National Gallery in D.C., said one of the earliest mock-ups
of the Bay Lights project was a one-minute computer animation. He worked with
Ben Davis, producer Amy Critchett and a team of employees, volunteers and city
departments to blow up those those tiny pixels into a huge computerized light
sculpture.
The final result is 25,000 LED lights strung up along the
1.8-mile stretch of bridge connecting San Francisco and Treasure Island. The
individual lights are spaced 12 inches apart and each one can be set to one of
255 brightness levels. The designs Villareal created and programmed to flicker
across the bridge don't include any images or text, and the sequence won't ever
repeat itself.
"What people will be seeing are abstract sequences
which are inspired by the kinetic activity around the bridge," said
Villareal. "It's not literally traffic or the water or any of those sorts
of things."
The designs were also inspired by Villareal's previous
experiences in the Bay Area in the 1990s, when he worked in a research lab in
Palo Alto and attended the Burning Man festival.
The result is an open-ended piece of art that Villareal
calls highly subjective. Lights might dim slowly from the edges or shapes will
unexpectedly dart across the surface like comets. The movements are playful,
relaxing and unpredictable.
"You can imagine anything you want in these lights.
For me, it's the mustache," said San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, who sports a
signature tuft of hair on his upper lip. Lee was on hand for the opening
ceremony, along with California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom.
While designing the sequences, Villareal had to address
practical issues like safety for passing boats and drivers on the bridge, as
well as artistic considerations such as making sure the animations were
viewable from up close, below the bridge, and as far away as Twin Peaks, where
the bridge can been seen on fog-free nights.
After obtaining permits and securing funding, trimming
the bridge was the final daunting step of the project. Teams worked from 11
p.m. to 5 a.m. over the past few months to install the fiber optic network,
choosing late night hours in order to have minimal impact on bridge traffic.
They used custom clips to hang the lights on 300 vertical spans, mounting some
lights as high as 500 feet. Locals have caught peeks of the final product over
the past couple of months as producers tested the lighting system ahead of the
big debut.
On Tuesday, the hard work finally paid off as crowds of
onlookers braved rain, cold winds and a few rogue waves to see the light
display's first official showing. Artist Carolyn Tillie and her husband brought
chairs, picnic food and wine to the show. Others accessorized outfits and even
bikes with blinking lights to celebrate the occasion.
Mayor Lee predicted an extended lifespan for the project,
saying the city will want to keep the display longer than its two-year
engagement. He hopes it will help give San Francisco the reputation as a
location for world class art.
Relieved to finally hit the On button for the project
after years of work, Villareal isn't thinking that far into the future at the
moment. "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it," he said.
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