Colorful LEDs Brighten Up Chicago’s Wabash Avenue
To celebrate Chicago’s L-Train, designers Jack Newell and Seth Unger want to create a public light installation of 5,000 LED tubes on the underside of the elevated tracks on Wabash Avenue.
The cool thing about this (crowd-funded) installation is that anyone in the world can tell the lights what to on the artwork’s website and app. The lights can change color, wave or sparkle. The Wabash Lights is the city’s biggest public art project since Millennium Park.
The reason Newell and Unger chose Wabash Avenue is that the place is a melting pot of people from different culture, economic and spiritual backgrounds. They hope that their art installation will increase the number of visitors, provide the growth of local businesses, and result in extra safety on the streets.
A Kickstarter campaign was launched in order to give the designers the opportunity to ‘beta-test’ the installation. With the collected $55,000 they are able to install a small section of lights on Wabash Avenue. The costs of the entire project are estimated at $5,000,000. Private donors, foundations and corporations will raise additional funding. In case you’re interested in supporting the project, be sure to head over to the website.
