Architectural light shows seem to be having their halcyon days, as more artists, architects and designers are turning to nighttime neon projections to breathe life into already incredible spaces. Last year, Lyon’s Festival of Lights saw a building reprogrammed into a massive playable pinball machine, and the Bring to Light Festival featured a total of fifty-nine site-specific artworks that illuminated Greenpoint, Brooklyn’s urban context. Starting today, Chicago’s famed Millennium Park will be another site for luminous architecture, as Anish Kapoor’s beloved Bean, more properly known as ‘Cloud Gate,’ will give off warped reflections of Chicago-based collective Luftwerk’s choreographed light show. When the sun sets, a total of ten projectors will be used to generate ‘Luminous Field’ and turn Chicago’s AT&T plaza into an even more vibrant, interactive public space.

This is not Luftwerk’s first collaboration with an iconic architectural setting; creative duo Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero were also the team behind the light installations at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater in 2011 and at Wright’s Robie House in 2010. Their fascination with the interaction between space, structure, and material landed them this most recent commission from the Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture, which Bachmaier calls “a great gift to the city.”

‘Luminous Field’ will be on show at Chicago’s Millennium Park from Feb 10th – Feb 20th.

[Images and video via Colossal]

by Kelly Chan

posted in Events news

tagged Anish Kapoor, Architecture, bean, Cloud Gate, fallingwater, frank lloyd wright, light, light show, Luftwerk, neon, public art, public space, Robie House, sculpture

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