Happy New Year!

This is a collage of different images of the 2008 Times Square Centennial New Year’s Eve Ball as it constantly transformed into a kaleidoscope of colors. The Ball was displayed at the Times Square Information Center. The LED lights can create a myriad of colors for a kaleidoscope of hues against the Waterford Crystal triangles.

"Jewel of Park Avenue"

The wash of bright colors along the Helmsley Building facade creates a festive profile for the building at night on Park Avenue. Built in 1929, the tower stands guard over the avenue. Last year, a new lighting scheme, designed by Al Borden of Philadelphia-based The Lighting Practice with LED lights was installed. Overall, more than 700 color-changing LED lights have been installed on the building, programmed into a computer than can coordinate a fanciful light show. 

Reflections and Distortions

The bright American Flag in LED lights on two sides of the US Armed Forces Recruiting Station in Times Square create interesting reflections on vehicles and buildings across the street. Here are some of the images of those reflections and distortions. Today is Labor Day, a federal holiday dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It also marks the unofficial end of summer.

Helmsley Building LED Lighting

The Helmsley Building north facade is lit up in red, white, blue and yellow. It is located at 230 Park Avenue, between East 45th and 46th Street.

The Helmsley Building Makeover - New Exterior LED Lighting

The Helmsley Building at 230 Park Avenue is now lit every night with an energy efficient, color changing, computer-controlled LED light system. The new lighting system is highly programmable. The LED lights are on the entire northern face and the crown of the building. In an effort to reinvent the building, the lighting exterior can, and will, go from tame to wild depending on the season. 

The new lighting makes the building stand out and visible from 40 blocks away. It also sends an important message that if older, historic and iconic buildings can take drastic measures to become environmentally friendly, there's no reason why every other building can't do the same. 

In 2010, after a more than $100 million renovation, 230 Park became the first pre-war office building in New York to earn Gold Leed status, an internationally recognized designation for being an environmentally friendly building.

American Flag at the U.S. Armed Forces Recruiting Station in Times Square

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers New York District has recently completed renovations on the U.S. armed forces recruiting station which sits on a traffic island on 43rd Street between Broadway and 7th Avenue in Time Square. Part of the project is the installation of illuminated energy efficient light emitting diodes American flags on both sides of the station to blend with the rest of Times Square buildings and heighten security and visibility while also increasing the energy efficiency of the facility. These photos were made along 7th Avenue with the American flag and its striking reflections on vehicles.

Jim Campbell's SCATTERED LIGHT Premiere At Madison Square Park

 

Using a Grand Central Terminal footage, Mr. Campbell programmed the LED lights to display low-resolution, moving images as individual pixels within the array.

video from abernheimer

Scattered Light, the New York public art debut of pioneering new media artist JIM CAMPBELL opened this evening at Madison Square Park. Campbell’s exhibition features three new major public art commissions, including "Scattered Light," his largest and most ambitious work to date. This mesmerizing public art installation runs through the fall and winter.

From http://www.nycgovparks.org/art and https://www.madisonsquarepark.org

With "Scattered Light," Campbell has hung nearly 2,000 LED lights, encased in standard light-bulb casings, from a massive suspension truss standing 20 feet high and stretching 80 feet down the center of the Oval Lawn. These LEDs have been programmed and sequenced by Campbell to turn and off in such a way that from the pathways of Madison Square Park—and from the major avenues beyond the park’s boundaries—it will appear as though the shadows of people and animals are passing across a massive, gently-undulating amorphous field of light.

Jim Campbell was born in 1956 in Chicago and educated at M.I.T., earning degrees in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics. A former Silicon Valley engineer, Campbell has emerged as one of the preeminent new media artists of this generation, inspired by 1970s research conducted by Bell Labs on low-resolution imagery and cognitive thresholds for accurate perception. Pixilated digital imagery has since become the lingua franca of contemporary visual culture and communication thanks to digital technology’s transformation of the way our society creates, shares and preserves images. Campbell’s art reduces both static and moving imagery to its barest essence—the pixels that serve as the elementary building blocks of so much of what we see—and poeticizes it, creating a space of exchange between artwork and viewer in which the human brain provides context and meaning to meticulously ordered and animated fragments of light. Campbell’s work is included the collections of institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He is the honored recipient of various public art commissions and awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship Award, Langlois Foundation Grant, and a Rockefeller Fellowship Award in Multimedia, among others. As an engineer, Campbell holds more than a dozen patents in the field of video image processing. His monograph Material Light was published by Hatje Cantz in 2010. Jim Campbell lives and works in San Francisco and is represented by Hosfelt, San Francisco and Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York.

ELECTRIC FOUNTAIN lights up the ROCKEFELLER CENTER

On display at the Rockefeller Center is a light sculpture called ELECTRIC FOUNTAIN by the acclaimed British artists TIM NOBLE and SUE WEBSTER. I made these images of the artwork last March 22nd at the Plaza at Rockefeller Center. This monumental 3-D outdoor LED-generated light sculpture, installed where the Christmas tree stands during Christmastime, is 35 feet (10.72 meters) high and 30 feet (10.6 meters) in diameter. The sculpture is made from 3,390 light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs and 527 meters of neon tubing. The design replicates the movement of water fountain: streaming, pooling, splashing and flowing, creating a hypnotic experience for viewers. Electric Fountain represents Noble and Webster's modern take on the world's oldest form of public art, the fountain, simultaneously referencing iconic pop culture symbols, such as marquee signs in Las Vegas and Times Square, and historical fountains. 
Viewing is better in the evening hours for obvious reasons. The art installation will be on display until April 5.