Bright Spots: 7 Lighting Ideas From Concerts and Art Installations

The stage from U2's 360° tour

In June, artist Anthony McCall brought his 3-D light sculpture "Between You and I" to Governors Island as part of Creative Time's public art quadrennial. In the island's St. Cornelius Chapel, two ghostly light projections interacted with each other, the visitors, and the architecture of the dark church.

Open since July, "Sunflowers, an Electric Garden" is a solar art installation in Austin, Texas, created by Harries/Héder Collaborative, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based firm specializing in public art. The flowers have photovoltaic solar collector panels that generate solar energy during the day and cast a blue glow over a pedestrian walkway at night.

Montreal-based artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (514.597.0917, lozano-hemmer.com) connected lighting and the human voice with his installation "Levels of Nothingness," which debuted in September as part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's "Works & Process" series. While narrator Isabella Rossellini read philosophical texts, computers analyzed her voice, generating a colorful, interactive lighting performance from a full rig of concert lighting provided by Scharff Weisberg Inc.

Show director and designer Willie Williams worked with production architect and designer Mark Fisher and production director Jake Berry to create one of the largest concert touring structures for U2's 360° tour. At the center of the stage was an expandable, movable 360-degree LED video screen made of elongated hexagonal segments. PRG provided the lighting, including its Bad Boy automated lights, which throw beams of light 100 feet or more.

The Mission San Juan Capistrano's September benefit gala included a concert by Roni Benise in the historic stone church. In order to preserve the site, Shine Lighting  installed a self-climbing truss that prevented equipment from touching the building. During the performance, moving and LED lights highlighted the architecture of the church with colors and patterns.

For  the Killers' 2009 Day & Age world tour, Christie Lites  worked with lighting designer Steven Douglas and Westbury National Show Systems to create a 91-foot-wide LED video curtain backdrop.

For the Dumbo Art Under the Bridge Festival in September, designer Sean Capone created "Camera Rosetum," a series of video projections in a tunnel beneath the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn. Capone worked with Dale Cihi of VideoFilm Systems to illuminate the ceiling of the tunnel with a rotating constellation of patterns, arabesques, and floral motifs.