How Light and Code Can Transform a City | Leo Villareal | TED

I'm an artist,

but I don't use traditional materials.

I use code and light as my palette,

and I came to this in a somewhat unexpected way.

I was a kid interested in this thing called Burning Man

before it became the global phenomenon that it is today.

At this point,

it was a tiny event out in the desert

that no billionaire had ever heard of.

This was also misunderstood as a hippie gathering in the desert.

So in 1994,

I got a tent and went out to the playa.

I set up my tent

and the first thing that happened was I got profoundly lost.

It was amazing to experience this as a 20-something year old,

and I was interested in having to relearn to navigate

in this new kind of space.

By my third year out there,

I decided to do something about it

and created the contemporary equivalent of breadcrumbs.

I made a beacon for myself

using 16 strobe lights and a microcontroller,

and I mounted this creation on top of my mobile home.

I programmed it at the lowest level,

with zero being off and one being on.

And this is the first time I connected software, light and space.

And it definitely helped me get home at night

and my neighbors were also immensely grateful.

(Laughter)

In 2008, I had the chance to bring what I learned at Burning Man

to an art museum.

Instead of 16 strobe lights,

I had a chance to work with 41,000 LED nodes

that I had installed in a 200-foot long corridor

at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

So I used my computer

to engage in concepts of emergent behavior,

which means I was improvising, trying things out, learning things.

And when I would find something compelling,

I would take those sequences

and that's what you see represented here,

layered in a randomized fashion.

Non-repeating.

I don't use any kind of imagery or text in my work,

and I'm interested in creating these abstract journeys.

So as people go on this walkway,

they're kind of washed by these patterns

and this kind of abstract storytelling.

Several years later,

I joined a group of people that wanted to enliven the Bay Bridge,

which was, sadly, you know, under-recognized and appreciated

in San Francisco.

250,000 cars move across the Bay Bridge every day.

So it's really the Bay area's workhorse.

But it's really overshadowed by the postcard beauty

of the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, which is just a few miles away.

So we thought, how can we use light to transform this piece of infrastructure

and change people's perceptions of it?

So I started with this image of the bridge

and I thought, well,

what would I do if the bridge was my canvas?

So I was working on this animation that you see in Photoshop

and different 3D tools.

And I was very excited

when I placed 25,000 lights on the suspender cables of the bridge.

But I thought, this is probably never going to happen

because of the scale and the complexity.

But to my surprise,

we started showing it to the owners and stakeholders

and the people who ran the bridge, and they got very excited,

which, a group like that,

they aren't normally an artist-friendly organization.

So we went to the next step.

They said, OK, let's take you up to the bridge.

It's one thing to do it in Photoshop

and a whole other to encounter it physically.

So I did my first cable walk.

They gave me a harness with a small shock absorber

and we started walking up the bridge.

So looking down one side, it was 250 feet to traffic,

on the other 225 to the water.

So this was a moment of awe, but also of abject terror.

(Laughter)

Eventually I got over that and I started to realize

and then see the beauty that surrounded me,

the fog, the light, the shadow of the bridge on the water.

And I started to think,

if I could only translate what I'm seeing here

into the sequences of light,

I could create a really amazing artwork.

So miraculously, we got an approval to do this.

All the work had to be done from 11 pm to 5 am,

and we had a very brave crew of people that went up on the bridge with LEDs

and started zip tying it,

literally zip tying it to the cables of the bridge.

We had a basket that we hung 250 feet over the water.

It was truly terrifying.

And cars are zipping by at 60 miles an hour

and you're protected just by a cone.

In addition to the LEDs,

we had to put hundreds of power supplies across the bridge

and run miles of fiber optic cable

in order to distribute all of our data to the lights.

But this was really an amazing example of communal effort,

and everyone who worked on it felt a real sense of participation,

like, we had all done this together.

So finally, once all the lights were installed,

I got to do my work.

I got to connect my laptop to the bridge,

and it's quite exciting to be able to control something

the scale of the Bay Bridge

with a simple laptop using my custom code.

And when people realized I was doing this,

I had huge crowds around me cheering.

So two and a half years later, after much organizing,

you know, a lot of challenges,

we finally were ready to illuminate the bridge in 2013.

On opening night, there was wind and rain

like I had never experienced in San Francisco.

(Laughter)

We all ended up on pier 14,

huddled under umbrellas with local politicians,

patrons, family members, team members.

And I had, you know, a terrible moment of anxiety.

What if this thing doesn't turn on?

Fortunately it did.

It turned on and, you know,

I was relieved and there was great celebration.

Literally thousands of people were cheering and dancing

despite the terrible weather.

So through infrastructure, light and code,

the Bay Bridge finally received the recognition

of its more glamorous neighbor.

The Bay Lights had transformed the bridge through this addition of light,

and it really changed people's perception of it.

The artwork was so successful that, we had a two-year permit,

and that got extended to 2023.

Meanwhile, leaders in London took notice.

The bridges over the Thames were very dark

and disappeared into the blackness at night.

Some of them were barely lit at all.

So they launched an international competition called The Illuminated River.

A hundred teams participated

and I ended up winning the commission.

(Cheers)

Thank you.

(Applause)

My concept was to create a ribbon of light

that could unify all the historic bridges in London

into one monumental artwork.

So in 2019, we launched the first phase of the project,

beginning with London Bridge.

Finally, the beauty of the bridges was revealed

through the addition of sequence light.

These bridges used to be very dark

and pedestrians would walk as quickly as possible past them.

But suddenly through this transformation,

we had created these meditative focal points.

And I'm very interested in the idea of entrainment,

by which our bodies synchronize with external signals,

and I could literally watch people seeing the lights

and watch them slow down in the middle of this bustling city.

In 2022, we launched the second phase of the project,

and this was right as the UK was coming out

of a countrywide quarantine.

But the lights represented resilience and rebirth,

and it was very exciting to be able to bring this public art to everyone,

and it was free and available to all, perfect pandemic art.

I also was able to add this 21-century layer of sequence light

to these historic structures.

And I started learning about the history of the Thames as a creative place.

And it inspired Turner and Whistler and Monet.

And Monet had actually painted some of the exact bridges I was working with,

so it was quite an honor,

I'm very humbled by it

and really proud to be able to create this gift for London.

So I never could have imagined

that me getting lost out in the desert

would have led to these monumental public-art projects.

But I think it's due to the power of light

and the power of light to transform cities.

And I often describe my pieces

as digital campfires that people gather around,

and they create a sense of wonder and awe and bring people together,

and they bring out the best in us as humans.

Once something has been transformed, it's very difficult to go back.

The Bay Lights was designed as a temporary project,

and last year, due to some technical issues,

we had to turn the piece off.

But the Bay Lights was not forgotten.

Out of love for the project,

community organizers raised funds

and we were able to turn the Bay Lights on next year

and the lights will shine for an additional ten years.

(Cheers and applause)

So I hope you all will come to San Francisco

and I appreciate the time.

Thank you.

(Cheers and applause)