HIVE (BLEECKER STREET) - Leo Villareal's LED Light Installation At Bleecker Street Subway Station

Last year, artist Leo Villareal created LED art called HIVE (BLEECKER STREET) now installed at the Bleecker Street subway station. Made of LED tubes, custom software, electrical hardware, aluminum and stainless steel, the LED sculpture takes the form of a honeycomb, above the stairs that marks the new transfer point connecting the IRT and IND subway lines. Bright colors, outlining each hexagonal honeycomb shape move across the sculpture. Villareal created an unprecedented art experience for transit riders who use the station, in its use of technology and LEDs. Hive (Bleecker Street) has a playful aspect in its reference to games. Riders will be able to identify individual elements within a larger context and track this movement. The work explores the compulsion to recognize patterns and the brain’s hard coded desire to understand and make meaning. The patterns also take inspiration from the research of the mathematician John Conway who invented the Game of Life, the best-known cellular automata program. Hive (Bleecker Street) speaks to a diverse audience - it is abstract and evocative and can have many different meanings. It creates an experience for riders through changing patterns presented in randomized progression. Overall, the piece resonates with the activity of the station, transportation network and the city itself. The work was fabricated by Parallel Development. Information from the MTA website.

Leo Villareal's "Buckyball" Light Sculpture Animates Madison Square Park

video by lulanoff

Madison Square Park Conservancy’s Mad. Sq. Art unveiled a new light sculpture at Madison Square earlier this evening - Leo Villareal's "Buckyball." Largely inspired by the work of Buckminster Fuller, Villareal’s BUCKYBALL applies concepts of geometry and mathematical relationships within a towering 30-foot tall, illuminated sculpture. feature two nested, geodesic sculptural spheres comprised of 180 LED tubes arranged in a series of pentagons and hexagons, known as a “Fullerene,” referring to the form’s discovery by Buckminster Fuller. Individual pixels located every 1.2 inches along the tubes are each capable of displaying 16 million distinct colors and will be specifically tuned by the artist’s own software, creating a subtle and sophisticated palette to enliven the Park. Relying on LED technologies driven by chance, BUCKYBALL’s light sequences will create exuberant, random compositions of varied speed, color, opacity, and scale. The site-specific work will remain on view daily from October 25, 2012 through February 1, 2013 in Madison Square Park.

Artist Leo Villareal states, “I am thrilled to be presenting BUCKYBALL in Madison Square Park. My new light sculpture takes the form of a Carbon 60 molecule and expands it to monumental scale. It also explores self-similarity through the use of two identical nested spheres, the outer at 20 feet in diameter and the inner at 10 feet. Lined with LED tubes, these structures are activated through sequenced light driven by custom software. This public artwork reinterprets many of the traditional elements found in the Park such as seating and historic monuments in a fresh and exciting way.”

Villareal received a BA in sculpture from Yale University in 1990, and a graduate degree from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Interactive Telecommunications Program. (Information from Madison Square Park website).