A Stadium That Reflects Crowd Emotions?
Imagine knowing what’s happening inside a building simply by the colours that flash on its exterior. At the University of New Mexico’s WisePise Arena, in Albuquerque, a new light installation does just that. Rheana Murray tells us more…
Like a series of glowing Tetris cubes, LED panels on the already iconic stadium brighten and darken with the roar of the crowd. And when the arena is empty, the colors respond to what’s going on outside the building, in nature.
“I was inspired by the idea that architecture can be a living, sort of breathing organism that can be injected with life by its inhabitants,” says Charlotte, North Carolina-based artist Ivan Toth Depeña, who designed the installation, called Inside/Out.
“So the people who use the building can actually have a direct relationship and effect on its aesthetics, and the energy in the building can be projected outward.”
When noise levels rise in the arena, the LED lights turn a deeper shade of red, the university’s color. “If teams are scoring points, the crowd is going to go wild and the building is going to reflect that,” Depeña says.
The artist was also interested in creating a relationship between the building and nature with a sunset mode and a night mode, which respond to the real-time color of the sky, factoring in environmental conditions to create “ever-evolving light patterns.”
“It’s programmed to never repeat itself, essentially,” Depeña says. “It’s constantly changing.” The arena is set on a hill, he adds, “and pretty much all of the surrounding space is really beautiful landscape and open vistas. The landscape itself is informing the building.”
The installation can also change colors for special events held at the arena. “It’s a dynamic building, and there’s lots of ability to control and customize the illumination based on what’s going on inside,” Depeña says.
“The art piece is adaptable.”
The installation premiered in May but officially launches in September to coincide with the start of the school year and the beginning of men’s basketball season.
This article first appeared here.
