ARTIST LEO VILLAREAL LIGHTS UP MADISON SQUARE PARK
We love twinkling holiday lights as much as the next folks, but the strings of tiny bulbs strung around NYC this season are getting a run for their money from a high-tech illuminated sculpture in Madison Square Park. Artist Leo Villareal, famous worldwide for his LED installations (including a recently-completed one composed of 25,000 individually programmed white LED bulbs covering a 1.8 mile span of the Golden Gate Bridge), has created a piece called BUCKYBALL that will live in the park through February 1. The project features two nested geodesic spheres designed from 180 LED tubes that form a series of pentagons and hexagons (the sculpture is named for the inventor Buckminster Fuller, who originally discovered this spherical shape made from geometric forms). Villareal customized software that allows the individual pixels along the tubes to display 16 million distinct colors in random sequences, patterns, and speeds. And if all of this isn’t heady enough, the sculpture also triggers viewers’ neurological impulses to identify these patterns and gather meaning from the external environment. Bottom line, the intellectual rigor behind this installation is fascinating, but the brilliant, multi-hued glow it casts throughout the park in the evening is reason enough for a visit.