Photos 24 Oct 2010 08:04 am
Scattered Lights
- This past week I walked through Madison Square Park (my subway wasn’t operating so I had to walk) at 6am and found the new, upcoming artpiece under construction. It’s called “Scattered Lights” conceived by artist, Jim Campbell and consists of some 2000 LED lights hung in traditional light housing.
It looks like a box of lites standing in the center of their
large lawn area, set in the middle of the park.
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When I arrived, early Saturday morning, the park was crowded
with little tent/stands obviously set to sell food later in the day.
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The lights were in trial mode of some kind. They were lighting
one row at a time from the bottom up. First one row, then two,
then three until the whole box lit.
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The lights were set between two scaffolding rigs. I couldn’t make out
what these were for or why they stood so close to the lights.
.
I wasn’t sure if the outer rigs were used to project something
onto the light wall. Or did they actually hold it up?
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I wasn’t even sure if this is all the lights were to do.
.
When I returned the following week (yesterday) things were
a bit more quiet. The lights weren’t lighting one row at a time.
They were on.
.
When I came to them, straight on, I suddenly saw silhouettes
of large people walking across the bed of lights. I couldn’t tell
if this were actual people of some kind of projection. (Actually,
the opposite of a projection since some of the lights would go
off making it look as though animated people crossed the path.)
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In these stills (and in all the stills I’ve found on line) the projected
silhouettes of people don’t show up well.) It’s hard to see the person
(in the right of the photo, she’s just about invisible) walking across.
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Consequently, I shot a small movie of the piece which gives a good
idea of what it looks like in motion. Not quite silhouettes, but dark
enough that you get that feel.
It might take a little while to load up initially.
The art piece opened October 21 and will remain until February 21, 2011.
on 24 Oct 2010 at 8:37 am 1.steve fisher said …
Thanks for taking the trouble to go back to video the piece, which certainly clarifies the artist’s intent. Pretty cool stuff. By the way, if you squint at the stills, it helps to see the silhouettes.
on 24 Oct 2010 at 3:25 pm 2.Stephen Macquignon said …
I will go check it out it looks great