TRACY SARROFF's public art installation Light Buoys has been launched at its Yarra’s Edge home in Melbourne’s Docklands.
Light Buoys is an ambitious site specific and interactive light-based sculptural artwork, rising from the waters of the Yarra River. As a tribute to the natural heritage of the riverbank area, the structure of reeds and grasses that once populated the historic marshland have been influential to its form. The technological transfiguration of the environment to its current state, combined with ideas of science fiction and science fact relating to bioluminescence inform the beautiful aesthetic of the artwork, and the unique interactive features of its light.
The artwork consists of 16 buoyant crystalline shards made from cloudy acrylic of varying heights. Acting as conduits for light, each shard incorporates LEDs housed within the stainless-steel buoys to illuminate the acrylic with colourful glows. Their colours and tones are activated by passing pedestrians on the lower promenade via ultrasonic sensors. Shifting icy blues and greens are dominant, but soft and subtle orange and purple hues activate the closer people move towards the work; resembling a life form recognising or responding to another life form.
Daily hours: Lights and ultrasonic sensors from dusk til midnight.
Commissioned by Mirvac for Development Victoria and the City of Melbourne.
Tracy Sarroff, Light Buoys, 2017, installation view, Photos by: John Gollings.