NEW YORK — Conceptual artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s interactive lighting installation, Pulse Park, involved 200 theatrical spotlights activated by the heart rates of visitors to Madison Square Park. Their pulse rates sent a matrix of light across the park’s Oval Lawn. Scharff Weisberg installed the 750-watt ellipsoidal spotlights bordering two sides of the central lawn. “The lights are triggered by two hand sensors located on a pedestal at the south end of the lawn,” said Scharff Weisberg event manager Tony Rossello. “When a visitor grabs the sensors with each hand, they record his heartbeat. The lights pulse to the recorded heartbeat all at once, then go dark momentarily, then the heartbeat pulse appears on the first instrument to the left of the pedestal. Subsequently, each instrument in the chain will pulse to the recorded heartbeats of the last 199 visitors. It begins clearing recorded heartbeats with the 201st visitor as the chain evolves with the heartbeats of newcomers to the installation.”
Pulse Park is the culmination of a series that Lozano-Hemmer debuted at the 2007 Venice Biennale with Pulse Room. The installation was open from Oct. 24 to Nov. 17 from dusk to 10 p.m. It was commissioned by Mad. Sq. Art, a program sponsored by the Madison Square Park Conservancy. Lozano-Hemmer, born in Mexico City and educated in Canada, is a well-known practitioner of interactive public art.
Samuel Rauch, art coordinator at the Madison Square Park Conservancy, called the project “one of our most successful public art installations to date,” and credited Scharff Weisberg for their “hard work,” “professionalism” and their “ability to quickly adapt to changing circumstances.”
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