Twinkle Twinkle Giant Bridge

I'm interested in rules and underlying structures,

and algorithms and ways of creating pattern.

It's all sequences of light that are highly subjective.

I take inspiration from all the systems

found around the bridge,

the movement of water,

the sky, the clouds, the traffic,

anything that's kind of kinetic,

I use as inspiration for the pieces.

We have 25,000 white LED lights

and they come on a cable,

and they're separated by one foot

from node to node.

Then the suspender cables are 30 feet apart,

so there's a large gap between them.

What we've had to do is run power

all across the bridge.

We've also had to run a big fiber optic network,

so we have 1.8-mile long cable.

The lights receive power, but they also need data.

Each light is capable of displaying

255 levels of brightness.

We're sending 25,000 bytes, 30 times a second.

What we have now is a real-time control system

which has multiple layers

and sequences of lights.

I can control brightness, contrast,

speed on each independent layer.

Then the layers are put together,

and there's different ways of combining the layers.

We do all kinds of mathematical operations on it.

There's a huge amount of content,

and it's being dynamically recombined.

That allows for the piece to look new

every time someone looks at it.

It makes the piece very liveable.

It's not something that keeps repeating.

Over two years, I think people will continue

to see new things in it.

(upbeat music)