Carpet of Luminous Orbs Opens at NYC's Madison Square Park

Photo by Mooreheart Photography, courtesy Madison Square Park.

Back in September, we announced that a luminous carpet of LED lights was coming to Madison Square Park’s central Oval Lawn. After much anticipation, the exhibition, Whiteout by Austrian artist Erwin Redl, has finally debuted and will be on view from November 16 through March 25, 2018. The public art project is made up of hundreds of transparent white spheres containing LED lights that are suspended from a square grid of steel poles and cabling.

“I am intrigued by the Park’s option of a large-scale installation that blurs the border between the virtual and the real,” said Redl of the exhibition. “The physicality of the swaying orbs in conjunction with the abstract animations of their embedded white lights allows the public to explore a new, hybrid reality in this urban setting.”

Visitors to the park will not be able to walk through the installation. Regardless, viewers can enjoy the show from a distance as the lights transform the space into “something straight out of Star Wars,” according to TimeOut. The orbs, which sway with the wind in the dark months of autumn and winter, are computer programmed to change appearance throughout the day. An undulating wave pattern will display across the work, traveling from north to south and south to north.