ACCUMULATING RHYTHMS
Illuminating our shared ecology, Accumulating Rhythms is a bold proposal for a large-scale lighting installation on the Tobin Bridge, driven by ecological rhythms.
“We believe that there is promise in transforming the Tobin Bridge into a symbol of environmental awareness and artistic ingenuity that celebrates its structural form.”
—Kris Carter, Chief Innovation Officer, MassDOT
Accumulating Rhythms will serve as a beacon, inspiring and illuminating our region’s commitment to ecological thinking.
Driving by ecological rhythms...
This world-class artwork will engage real-time environmental and climate-model data to express our interconnectedness with our ecology.
A bold net-zero commitment…
Accumulating Rhythms is committed to achieving net-zero operational and embodied carbon through hyper-local offsets. To achieve this, we will partner with outstanding environmental justice and energy-transition organizations based right here - in the shadow of the bridge.
The artwork consists of a series of state-of-the-art lighting fixtures, networked together and governed by custom programing that can render unique colors as fine as a single point of light or as broad as a gradient spanning the bridge’s entire truss structure.
This dexterity enables the artwork to deploy light as a tool for revealing underlying rhythms within climate data, bringing current and shifting ecological realities to the forefront.
More than merely shining red for hot, the custom programing uses sophisticated algorithms to interpret the complex interrelations between streams of ecological data and translate them into expressions of light. The result is an ever-evolving series of lighting events cast across the bridge, with viewers observing layers of color and rhythmical motifs.
To find shifting patterns and recognizable rhythms in the artwork over its lifespan would be, in a way, to see them in our shared ecology.
