Leo Villareal Working on the Bay Lights

Leo Villareal is the creator of LED-based "light sculptures" installed at dozens of museums and other locations. His latest creation is the Bay Lights Project, a vast array of computer-driven LEDs covering the western span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The installation is planned to debut officially on March 5, 2013. This video, captured by project members on the evening of January 24, shows Villareal running sequencing tests on the lights.

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[Khuong Truong]

Search for The Bay Light Alum Rock Studio.

[Derek S]

Straight from TechCrunch: " It’s all privately funded, and should cost some $8.8 million in total to keep the project going until 2015; $6 million of that has already been raised and put toward the installation itself. To date, The Bay Lights’ investors including Bay Area tech luminaries including Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, SV Angel founder and longtime investor Ron Conway, Y Combinator partner and former Googler Paul Buchheit, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, and others."

[unsum sum]

Could not agree more.

[unsum sum]

Such a waste of money and energy! I wonder who's paying the bill. People of course. It must have cost a fortune - the installation, the maintenance and the electricity. It's outrageous that Villareal is controlling it via his PC. Shouldn't it be controlled by the city officials instead? City has no money and is cutting services and here it goes down the drain for some dumb project.

[bkinouye]

Yeah, like Gangnam Style.

[jvagrusa]

If possible it would be awesome to set the lights to music like an audio analyzer!! Just an idea.

[Dave Yost]

This video does not play smoothly on my high-end laptop. It pauses every second. Anyone else have this problem?

[kelly94111]

Spectacular! What a gift to the City. It's fireworks without the smoke or noise. A sparkling, magical work of creative inspiration. Thank you Leo and BayLights team.

[gugelearth]

the lights are not very bright, it's not that the bridge is glowing and illuminating its surroundings. you don't see less stars than usually here in sf. if we wanna see a sky full of bright and beautiful stars, yes, we do have to go to marin, but that's really not influenced by the bay lights. that's city life.

[gugelearth]

this project is absolutely mesmerizing and beautiful!! i'm in awe whenever i pass by the bridge.

what's the energy source?