LIGHT BUOYS
TRACY SARROFF
Tracy Sarroff, Light Buoys, 2017, Install view, Photo by: John Gollings
Light Buoys is located at Riverside Moat near 100 Lorimer Street, Yarra’s Edge in Melbourne’s Docklands, and was officially opened by Martin Foley, MP, Victorian Minister for the Creative Industries on 1st August 2017.
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.
Rising six metres at its highest point and approximately 50 metres along the length of the moat, the public artwork is a unique structure of engineering complexity and rigour to meet the demands of a marine environment open to changes in tide, wind and climate. 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. Their buoyancy is also responsive to the tide - rising and falling. When pedestrians are no longer present to activate the work, it will simply pulse softly, imitating the breathing and resting of a living organism.
Daily hours: Lights and ultrasonic sensors from dusk til midnight
Commissioned by Mirvac for Development Victoria and the City of Melbourne
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