Feature Details

Name: Sensing YOU / Sensing WATER

Description: Sensing YOU and Sensing WATER are two artworks geographically and conceptually linked but distinctly different. The projects are part of the “Illuminating Downtown Project (IDP).” The intent of IDP is to visually reinforce downtown San Jose as the Capital of Silicon Valley, and that this energy would be transmitted at a number of scales– building tops, gateways, on the street and as one passes through the downtown. It is a way to engage art, light and technology in a larger vision of the downtown, while considering ways of making the downtown a more livable, enjoyable, engaging place. Sensing YOU is an interactive artwork defined by over 1000 painted circles and 81 individually controlled illuminated rings that play a variety of patterns and low-resolution mapped video over the ceiling surface of the I-87 highway underpass at Santa Clara Street. The patterns are activated by pedestrians and bicyclists moving through the space- setting off pre-programmed sequences.Sensing WATER, a weather-responding and interactive artwork utilizing light and paint to define the downtown gateway at Highway 87 and San Fernando St. The project is composed of 2 elements, the massive painted sloped wall that abstractly references flowing water, and the overhead evening lighting that illuminates with rippling patterns of light the underpass. The project uses real-time NOAA weather data to compose different patterns of light on the ceiling. (e.g.: 0-5mph winds vs thunderstorms)