“The Bay Lights,” The World’s Largest LED Light Sculpture, Debuts in San Francisco

On Tuesday night, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge outshined The Golden Gate Bridge for the first time in 75 years. That happened when artist Leo Villareal flipped a switch and illuminated 25,000 lights, turning the 1.8-mile expanse into the world’s largest L.E.D. light sculpture. According to The New York Times, the privately-funded project, estimated to cost $8 million, “has become a darling of moneyed Silicon Valley types.” And, it’s not hard to see why. As Villareal explains in the video above, “The Bay Lights” installation runs on custom-designed software (written in C) that captures the kinetic activity around the bridge and then uses the data to sequence the lights, creating patterns that never occur twice. You can visit the installation through 2015. Learn more here.

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