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A few months ago this beautiful art installation went up on the side of a downtown building. It features around 20 glowing tubes that are 8 stories high and they slowly change colour from top to bottom. I was totally taken back at how they could do this! I’ve always had it in the back of my head that I should blog this and see if anyone knows anything about them and now I’ve decided to procrastinate no more! At first glance I thought it was some kind of moving gel that just coloured the light but the tubes were too small and there was not visible way for the gel to loop. My only guess is that they are some kind of tube shaped LED display, which would be very impressive considering how smooth and diffused the light appeared. You can stand there and be entertained for hours! Ok well maybe not hours but its a nice reason to stop power walking, take out your earbuds and look around you. Anyways, go down Yonge St. in downtown Toronto and check them out. If anyone has info on who this is by or how it was done please let me know in the comments.

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Project Documentation

This past weekend (March 16th-19th) my program department at Ryerson University went on a group tip to NYC to look at art, have fun and gallivant about the city. A few of my friends and I went to The Met to see a new media exhibit that we had heard was on at the time. Overall we were disappointed with the quality and amount of work that was on display except for one work that impressed all of us. The piece is entitled Motion and Rest #2 by Jim Campbell (American, born 1956) which featured a simple 24 x 32 white LED grid board. On the board was the silhouette of a man walking and then stopping but what was really fascinating was the illusion that the sparsely placed LEDs gave of a full silhouette.

I tried staring at it from all angles convinced that the black board behind it was also some kind of display that was filling in the gaps between the lights only to discover my eyes were tricking me. The sign beside the piece stated that it was done using motion capture techniques. The piece also reminded me of Julian Opie’s work here in Toronto in both the AGO and on Bloor street featuring silhouettes of people walking along the street. For me out of the ten or so pieces there at Closed Circuit: Video and New Media exhibit this was the work that stood out from the rest. It has sparked an interest in me to explore the basic concept of light in art and light as art.

Perhaps it was the minimalism that Campbell achieved through the piece in which he was able to strip the human motion of walking down to the most basic possible visualization. No clothes, no hairstyles, no eye contact with the subject but yet the way in which they walk communicates a large amount of information about the person. Campbell even emphasized this minimalist subject matter even further by parring his medium down to as little as possible consisting of a few hundred white LEDs.