Open Air illuminates Philly night sky

Visual artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer will illuminate the night sky with 24 search lights over the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia from Thursday, September 20 through Sunday, October 14. The interactive lights will not be controlled by the artist, but rather controlled through crowdsourced voice messages of people around the world. Watch as Lozano-Hemmer explains his vision for Open Air Philly. Also featured are performances by beatboxer Rahzel and Philly Youth Poet Jamarr Hall. (Video produced by Lindsay Lazarski/WHYY)

I believe in Philadelphia I often tell

people my attachment to Philly is

visceral. When I'm downtown or a South

Philly restaurant, I feel remarkably

connected. "Should I compare thee to a

summers day? Thou art more lovely and

more temperate.

"Open air is a large scale interactive

installation, where very powerful

spotlights are actually controlled by

the voices of participants. Most of the

time when you see a show, a light show in

the sky, it's actually following a score

of music so the lights are moving to the

beat. Instead here in Philadelphia, what

we're doing, is if those lights move it's

because they were reacting to the voice

of someone who has sent a message either

through a special iPhone app or through

a webpage. That message arrives into our

servers, we analyze it for volume for

intonation for frequency, and then when

it gets played back in the Parkway the

lights react to those parameters. So in

position and and in intensity." (music)

"The project is in a way it's kind of

like a rant line or maybe like a

voicemail system, where you send messages

but instead of sending them directly to

somebody, first they go into the night

sky. People can listen to those messages

through the phone or through speakers

that are any consolable in Logan Square.

So the idea is, create a platform for

communication, but that is visualized and

that takes over the entire park. "Baby, it looks like you never felt sky before, well let

all rhythm read the fine morning before

you go blowing out those stars of

tomorrow and I'm Ray by the way. Then

yeah". "When your message appears in the

night sky, the system notifies you it's

like.. 'hey it's your turn here comes your

message' and all the lights actually find

you with GPS tracking and all the lights

are oriented toward you. So in a way you

become part of the show, you're part of

in the limelight so to speak but it's

also a little bit awkward or violent

because you feel like all of these

lights are actually tracking you over

the park where you can't get away from

them, so it's a project that has a a

sense of seduction and participation but

then also a sense of tracking and of

policing and just making people aware

that these technologies have very

accurate information about where we are

and who we are.

What I'm interested in is in

self-representation, the idea that it is

the people who make the decisions about

what the contents will be. What you're

actually seeing is what people have said

and you too can be part of that dialogue