Canadian artist Douglas Coupland’s ‘Northern Lights,’ a 14,865-m2 (160,000-sf) light-emitting diode (LED) installation on the new Telus Sky Tower, will become Calgary’s biggest public art piece when it debuts in 2019.
The north and south façades of the 60-storey mixed-use tower, the city’s third-tallest, will showcase the installation—integrating 600 custom bulbs around window frames to create ‘pixels’—with programmable colour changes and lighting sequences. Coupland has developed the full-colour motion sequences to take advantage of the building’s curved shape (see video).
Messages will also be concealed within the sequences, to be read on smartphones with a free downloadable app. These messages may include the date, time and weather, but could also become more elaborate, as the technology supports an infinite number of colour and pattern combinations.
