Online audience are invited to create spectacular patterns of light in the Vancouver sky. Starting at dusk on February 4, 20x 10,000W XL10s from Syncrolite began creating a canopy of light in the night sky above Vancouver and English Bay with designs created by people around the world and delivered via the Internet. Called Vectorial Elevation, it is the first time the internationally celebrated work of art will be displayed in Canada and over a body of water. The setup includes four webcams, Linux servers, GPS, Google Earth 3D DMX interface, and custom-software. The interactive area is 1,000 x 1,000m, with a visibility of 15km radius depending on conditions.
Visitors to www.vectorialvancouver.net can design how the lights will move, their angles and how they are clustered in timed sequences to create their own patterns for the world to see. Organizers estimate 130,000 different patterns will be created in the 24 days the project operates from dusk to dawn with more then two million people viewing it.
The lights will move and create patterns silently from locations in Vanier Park and Sunset Beach that cover an area of 100,000 square metres and be visible within 15 kilometres of the city's downtown core, stretching to Richmond, the peaks of Cypress and Grouse mountains.
This large-scale temporary public art installation is co-commissioned by the City of Vancouver's Olympic and Paralympic Public Art program and Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad, presented by Bell, with support from the Province of Quebec. The installation — considered one of the world's largest interactive artworks — is by Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer of Antimodular Research and is part of CODE, the Cultural Olympiad's Digital Edition.
Previously, the installation was staged in Mexico, Spain, Ireland, and France where it received accolades such as Lyon's prestigious Trophée des Lumières.