Unnumbered Sparks For TED’s 30th Anniversary
Vishal Khan
Mar 22, 2014
Drawing large crowds of amazed onlookers, a Google Chrome-enhanced structure lit up the sky in Vancouver, Canada. Called Unnumbered Sparks, the installation featured a gigantic shimmering art structure that was suspended at a wondrous height overlooking the Convention Centre waterfront.
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On St. Patrick’s Day this year, the city of Vancouver witnessed this mesmerising interactive formation to celebrate TED Conference’s 30th year anniversary.
How It Was Made
Unnumbered Sparks is officially one of the biggest textile sculptures ever made, and was headed by Aaron Koblin, Google’s Creative Director and design artist, Janet Echelman. A creative team of hundreds made use of extremely light fibres for the installation, and it was anchored to the roof of a neighbouring skyscraper.
Location And Height
The sculpture stands at 745 feet, and is placed right in front of the entrance to the TED office in the middle of the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel and the Vancouver Convention Centre.
Interactive Element
The surface of the sculpture is capable of mimicking colorful ripples that participants create on their Smartphones. All they have to do is launch Chrome or any other browser, choose a color and draw a path along the surface of their handset. These are instantly displayed in altering colors on the sculpture.
Crowdsharing
Using a life-sized Chrome browser window that is projected in high definition onto the 300-foot sculpture, the installation becomes a reciprocal structure. The entire concept makes use of a distinctive type of crowdsharing.
Why It Was Built
The creation of a sculpture of this enormity was obviously a huge project, and the idea was first conceptualized with the help of Autodesk’s design tool. Koblin says she created this playful interactive work to help people choreograph light into it, and essentially play with the sky.
