Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Skylights: Dumbo

About a month ago the Dumbo Arts Festival took place in that part of Brooklyn that is Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. Not surprisingly, there was plenty of art and installations, one of which was Skylights: Dumbo by Engin Ayaz, Adrià Navarro López, Rozit Ardit and Esther Sze-Wing Cheung. I didn't make it to the festival, but for me and everybody else who missed it, here's a video of the installation and its construction:



And some explanation from the design team:
Skylights: Dumbo is a site-specific sculptural pavilion that utilizes ambient lighting within Brooklyn Bridge Park to show star constellations on the ground via cast shadows. The pavilion is organically shaped by site and programmatic constraints such as orientation, views and shadow paths. With its specific shape, location and perforation, the canopy is illustrates the complete star map of New York for the evenings of September 28-30th, the dates of Dumbo Arts Festival 2012.

The motivation behind this project is to poetically address the politics of light, and specifically side effects of light pollution in urban settings. By using the streetlight as the source for the star map, the project challenges the visitor to reconnect with the larger planetary scale, the stars that enshroud us.

The project has been exhibited in Brooklyn Bridge Park for the Dumbo Arts Festival 2012, and is currently looking for a longer term exhibition location.

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