Longitudes
Longitudes cuts across Latitudes’ projects and research with news, updates, and reportage.
James Yamada's Public Art Fund Project, New York
Wed, Apr 30 2008
Unveiled on Monday "this new sculpture by James Yamada entitled Our Starry Night, will be on view at Doris C. Freedman Plaza at Fifth Avenue and 60th Street. Built from powder coated aluminum and punctuated with 1,900 colored LED lights, Our Starry Night is a 12-foot-tall sculpture that acts as an interactive passageway to Central Park."
As visitors to the park walk through the Public Art Fund Project sculpture at all hours of the day and night, it will illuminate in response to each person individually. When visitors walk through the portal in the piece, they trigger a metal detector hidden inside the structure's casing. This activates the LED lights that perforate the exterior of the sculpture. Common everyday metal objects such as cell phones, keys, belts, jewelry, cameras, computers, and the like will trigger the lights; the luminosity and the light patterns seen in the piece will correspond to the quantity of metal detected. Our Starry Night is literally activated by the public, reinforcing the notion that art — and particularly public art — is dependent on the people around it." (until October 28, 2008)
