DAY-GLO ISLANDS
DAY-GLO ISLANDS, a mobile installation piece designed by Kimberly Ackert and Pillow Culture focusing on the collision between light and land. The piece is designed to be situated in multiple public sites in New York City juxtaposing natural daylight with the geology of the city.
The project recognizes New York City as a grid of artificial illumination. Yet, with over two hundred days of sun per year, more than any other in the northeast, New York is also a city of natural light, located along a unique, and precarious, geological condition. Our proposal, DAY-GLO ISLANDS, addresses this conjunction of solar, geological, and urban structures.
The New York City grid and its buildings necessarily mediate access to natural light and geological formations. Buildings cast shadows, as well as frame and reflect light. The city grid has largely erased, leveled, and circumscribed its geological record. DAY-GLO ISLANDS accepts this mediating condition of the city as a point of departure for capturing the ephemeral beauty and intensity of natural light in New York City and evoking the typically hidden formations of the city’s geology.
800,000 residents of New York City alone were in complete darkness in the aftermath of hurricane Sandy. The year 2012, as the city and its environs rebuilds, DAY-GLO ISLANDS proposes a series of urban installations that brings attention to the solar geometry of New York City by engaging the pedestrian public at precise moments of the year, specifically the summer solstice. These site-specific investigations extend an urban exterior/interior through the playful effects of light and shadow and through references to a broader geological and solar context.
DAY-GLO ISLANDS consists of a two-part mobile installation: 1) Creating a set of free-standing pivoting panels clad with mirror. Positioned to animate a site in a composition of light and shadow, the panels correspond to the vernal or autumnal equinox. 2) Simulating a park-like setting featuring large-scale sculptural forms, suitable for sitting on, modeled on existing local rock formations. These artificial rocks are machined from 3D computer files, and constructed from laminated Richlite and aluminum sheets, recalling the geological condition found on the specific site.
DAY-GLO ISLANDS references, work by land artists who recognize that sites are unique by virtue of their position relative to light, time, and space.
DAY-GLO ISLANDS highlights the passage of solar time, offering a series of sites for contemplative respite within the urban environment. Three sites have been chosen for consideration because of their relationship to the grid, the solar orientation and corresponding geological foundation. Using NYC as a physical laboratory, each site presents a unique testing condition offering the possibility to investigate and study the ephemeral effects of sunlight and its relationship to a latent geological condition. Primary calendrical dates for installations: week of the June 20th summer solstice and week of the December 20th winter solstice.
SITE #1. The Storefront for Art and Architecture, Lower Manhattan,
Geologic fault line, Cameron’s Line
SITE #2. The Traffic Island: Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 29th Street
SITE #3. Columbus Circle: Unique residual spaces that are ideally located to experience a solar alignment occurring twice yearly when the setting sun is aligned with the east-west city grid.
COLLABORATORS