Working Title: Sky Lights

What is it?

Sky Lights is intended to be a public art installation, an open source hardware project and an online community. The hardware component will entail the design of a powerful light source using inexpensive, easily obtainable materials. I will design and build several of these light sculptures myself. The design plans and building instructions will then be hosted online for others to download and use to construct their own light sources. This site will also serve as a repository for interested users to modify existing designs, or upload their own original designs.

In addition to functioning as a hub for the exchange of lighting designs and construction techniques, the site will also serve to coordinate the display of the completed pieces. This display will take place on the same nights that the annual September 11th memorial Tribute in Light is installed at the World Trade Center site. Participants would display their creations on the roofs of buildings along the Brooklyn and Queens waterfront, creating a network of individual lights as a counterpoint to the monolithic projections across the river.

My long-term goal for this project would be to make it an annual event to commemorate September 11th. If the project demonstrated potential in 2010, I would aim to increase participation for the tenth anniversary in 2011. An ideal, though perhaps wildly ambitious goal, is to have one light for each of the 2,605 victims.

How will it work?

The four issues I will need to consider in designing the lighting are the types of light sources, the power source, construction materials and aesthetics. The most important for lighting and power sources, as well as any additional materials used in construction, is that they be inexpensive and easy to obtain. The light source should be powerful enough to be viewed from the east side of Manhattan across the river. Ideally, one of the designs would project a column of light into the sky, similar to the Tribute in Light, but obviously much dimmer and on a smaller scale. Another construction technique to consider is the use of reflective materials to intensify the light. But the light source must also be compact enough that it can be powered using current from a wall outlet, or, ideally, a battery or other portable power source.

Each lighting design should be powerful enough to be observed from the skyline, but also designed with aesthetic requirements in mind, so that they might be displayed as sculpture or used as lighting in the home when not in use as part of the Sky Lights project.

Why this project?

Sky Lights will be an original contribution to the realm of public art in that it will constitute an act of collaboration on a very large scale. It will also provide artists and hobbyists with an opportunity to contribute to a 9/11 memorial in a very personal way. The Tribute in Light memorial and the planned memorial at Ground Zero are massive projects, financed and directed by government, civic and business institutions. Sky Lights would be a way for regular citizens to get personally involved in the planning and construction of a networked or crowd-sourced memorial that would grow virally, from the ground up.

For me personally, this project is important because it allows me to explore a number of areas that I am interested in, but have not had the opportunity to explore in-depth thus far at ITP. These areas include fabricating and constructing three-dimensional objects from different materials; creating participatory, public, and site-specific artwork; and web design and development, particularly with a focus on creating web-based communities. I hope that after school, this project will help me to both find work doing commercial interaction design and development, and to help me secure funding and support for other art projects, both public and otherwise.

What are the criteria for success?

The single most important criterion for the success of this project is having a high level of participation from other artists, makers, tinkerers and hobbyists. In order to accomplish this goal, it is imperative that the initial designs and instructions are clear and easy to follow (as the community grows, more complex plans may be added), and the materials are inexpensive and accessible. If people with basic creative and technical skills and experience (i.e. – my test audience of friends, colleagues, etc.) are capable of acquiring the necessary supplies and completing a design within a reasonable period of time (3-5 days), then I will consider my designs successful.

Creating a successful design is only half of the overall success of the project. The other half depends on building a dynamic and committed online community of participants who wish to contribute. However, I also anticipate that this aspect of the project will be ongoing and will extend beyond my final thesis presentation. Accordingly, my criteria for the success of this aspect of the project are to have the site itself designed and built, and to have it populated with a base of 15-20 test users.