Work recently began on the world’s largest light sculpture, The Bay Lights, an art installation spanning 1.8 miles wide and 500 feet high across the San Francisco Bay Bridges West Span. Using 25,000 white individually programmed LED lights, world renowned artist Leo Villareal will create complex algorithms and patterns to form a high-tech display of random moving lights featuring never repeated sequences of weather and water patterns, along with designs of roadway traffic, ships, and wildlife.
As part of the project to ignite civic pride, Transdyn was selected to design, fabricate, configure, and test the Ethernet based communications network which will provide connection between the light system manager and the power distribution devices. Transdyn will deliver the overall design of the Ethernet communications network and the fiber optic communications backbone, as well as the design and fabrication of the power and communications distribution nodes, network communications distribution nodes, and the central control station. Also, Transdyn will provide overall communications network testing and support.
Private funds have been raised to install the $8 million sculpture that will shine from dusk to midnight for two years. It is estimated the exhibit will draw over 50 million visitors to the Bay Area and add $97 million dollars to the local economy beginning with the Grand Lighting on March 5, 2013. The lights will not be visible to bridge motorists but can be seen from the bridges north waterfront or from boats within the bay.
Illuminate the Arts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the creation and presentation of community-activating public art, is overseeing Leo Villareal’s massive iconic light display. Villareal is a pioneer in the use of combining LED lights and encoded computer programming to create complex illuminated displays. His art is showcased in public spaces around the country and in permanent collections of major museums worldwide.