Reflecting the Stars – Public Art Installation – The Windmill Factory

Press Coverage

Watch the lights twinkle on as the sunsets over the Hudson. Jon Morris and his team at the Windmill Factory mounted 217 LED capsules on the remnants of a pier to resemble constellations.

Engineered by Google’s Adam Berenzweig, “Reflecting the Stars” reminds us of the light pollution that masks the night sky for more and more of the world.

At Pier 49, Hudson River Park at Bank St., until the end of Oct. when the sun can no longer power the installation.

Information: +1-818-987-9435; http://www.thewindmillfactory.com.

Free associate New York and you are bound to think of lights. The fantasy image of a city in lights is likely more of a faux-pas-fantasy today in the face of Green-ness and concerns of light pollution. Just think of the difference between a night sky in New York and say . . . Kentucky. That’s exactly what Jon Morris, director of the Brooklyn-based The Windmill Factory did. Born in a small Kentucky town where he frequently gazed at stars above Lake Cumberland, Morris grappled with the idea of the disappearing night sky over New York City and other metropolises of the east coast.

In a gesture to bring the night sky back, Morris teamed up with T/K firm/collective Kontraptioneering, Google Senior Software Engineer Adam Berensweig, and interns from MIT and NYU’s Interactive Technology Program, who all started toying with wirelessly-controlled, solar-powered LED lamps for the decaying pilings of Pier 49. The result is Reflecting the Stars, an interactive light installation consisting of radio-controlled, steel encased luminaries perched on top of the pier posts. Each luminary, named after constellations that are becoming increasingly obscured, can be dedicated with a personal message online here.

So flip, switch, and clap off your thoughts of bright lights in the big city and remember the lights you used to wish upon. Reflecting the Stars happens from sunset to midnight through October 25. Special events at the Pier 49 site in the

     

Hudson River Park include a sunset launch with Charles Renfro (DS + R) and Assembly member Linda Rosenthal, and starting on Tuesday, August 30, weekly onsite telescopic stargazing with astronomers. Read more here for information about Reflecting the Stars.

Due to damage by Hurricane Irene, the opening reception of and sunset picnic for Reflecting the Stars is rescheduled for tomorrow, August 31, 7:17 at the Pier 49 site in the Hudson River Park.

See the Stars...in the Hudson; Honoring Zone A Evacuees

HUDSON RIVER — A team of volunteers rowed out from Pier 49 to install 217 LED lights on top of posts in the Hudson River. The point? "Reflecting the Stars," a public art project with the goal of "recreating a night sky with visible stars on the Hudson River." After a one-day delay thanks to Hurricane Irene, the project's opening reception is tonight at sunset, 7:17 p.m. sharp. Special guest: Charles Renfro of Diller Sofidio + Renfro. [CurbedWire Inbox]

Reflecting the Stars

Jon Morris has been a theater producer, social entrepreneur, champion springboard diver—and an artist, in which last capacity he serves as director of New York-based arts collective The Windmill Factory. Since 2007, he and a band of likeminded collaborators have conceived and crafted a series of elaborate public projects, ranging from a grassy 30-foot-tall slide in the Nevada desert to a multi-media performance piece on themes of atomic destruction.  The group’s newest endeavor is “Reflecting the Stars.” Located just off the shore of Manhattan’s West Side in the Hudson River near Bethune Street, two hundred seventeen solar-fed LED light capsules, lashed to defunct shipping-pier posts, mimic the natural night sky above light-polluted New York. Users can punch up different constellations using a purpose-built console fixed to the walkway railing. The project was two years in the making, and it made its debut August 31st with

     

a subdued sundown function for some forty-odd attendees scattered on picnic blankets near the riverbank. “It was just a beautiful night,” said Morris. The event took place one day behind schedule, after Hurricane Irene tore through town and threw the installation equipment of its delicately engineered balance. Charles Renfro of firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro credited Morris for logistical perseverance—including, crucially, the artist’s dedicated “schmoozing” of key leaders in business and government who helped make the project a reality. One of the latter, State Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, was on hand, and she too had praise for “Reflecting the Stars”. “Every child,” she said, “should be able to see the night sky.      

Reflecting the Stars Living in the city, we are well aware of the effects of noise and air pollution; just walk down Broadway pretty much any time of the day and feel your blood pressure rise. But what about light pollution? It obscures constellations, disrupts natural ecosystems, and can also negatively impact our health. The Windmill Factory wants to bring these issues to light during Climate Week NYC. They've installed solar-powered LED lights on the decaying posts of Pier 49 to recreate the constellations of our night sky. Now you don't have to leave the city to do a little bit of stargazing.” - Whitney Eden, Flavorpill

Video Piece: Melena Ryzik on the Hudson River art installation “Reflecting the Stars,” and a tour of a housing development in the South Bronx with the architecture critic Michael Kimmelman.

Produced by Gabe Johnson

     

The Stars Come Out in the Hudson

By Rosanna Boscawen

Wednesday night, as The Observer crossed the West Side Highway at Bank Street and walked over to Pier 49, the pink-orange sun was reflecting onto the Hudson River, and people had filled the surrounding patches of grass, waiting for the official unveiling of a new public artwork by artist Jon Morris called Reflecting the Stars, which was sitting out in the water.

Mr. Morris and his team had spent the past few days attaching wirelessly controlled, solar-powered LED lamps onto the gnarled wooden posts that once constituted the pier in an arrangement that replicates the constellations that one would see in the night sky, looking west from the pier, were it not for New York’s substantial light pollution.

The opening had been delayed by 24 hours because the threat posed by Hurricane Irene had forced his installation team to remove an accompanying plaque and solar panels days before it was due to open. “They can get rained on, but they can’t be submerged,” Mr. Morris told The Observer.

“We left the stars in the water,” Mr. Morris said, “and some of them got skewed out of place, but we didn’t lose any.” He sounded elated. “Then we had to reprogram everything and there just wasn’t enough time.”

The project had cost $25,000 to install and was paid for by a variety of companies and foundations. It will be in place until there is no longer enough power from the sun to light them up at night—“probably the end of October or the beginning of November,” Mr. Morris said.

New York assemblyman Linda Rosenthal and Charles Renfro of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the architecture firm behind the nearby High Line, were on hand to discuss their support for the project.

For Ms. Rosenthal, the work also has political significance. She is currently working to pass a bill that would create dark-sky reserves, light-free areas set aside to allow people to see the night sky, and promote new shades for streetlamps that would lessen their blinding glare. “At the moment I have a lot of opposition,” she said, “but something like this could really turn things around.”

Mr. Renfro took a more philosophical approach to the work. “Reflecting the Stars links itself to realms near and distant,” he said. “It is a new way of observing our surroundings, helping us imagine the invisible if mankind were not so visible.”

New York has become a bastion for public art lovers of late. We asked Renfro how this was different from public art elsewhere in the city.

     

“I like the city’s public art,” he said. “But this has the whimsy of The High Line; it connects with something else.”

Later, Mr. Morris told the crowd that Buddhism advises its devotees to go out and look up at the night sky in order to relieve stress. We tried to imagine looking up at his LED stars from the bottom of the Hudson, but we couldn’t quite manage it. “We look down at the stars today,” we thought, as the blue-white lights flickered on and off in their constellations in the now dark, starless sky.

Star Light, Star Bright

By Staff

The little-guy-against-the-odds story of Jon Morris continues this week. Creative director of The Windmill Factory, two-and-a-half years ago Morris had the idea of creating a starry night sky over the Hudson River for New Yorkers who wanted a glimpse of something other than smoggy skies.

With no real knowledge of electronics and no money, Morris managed to inspire enough people to believe in his dream that the result was the invention of wirelessly controlled solar-powered LED lights, all creating Reflecting the Stars at Pier 49, just off of Bank Street. You can even dedicate one of the “stars.”

Originally aimed to be unveiled at sunset, Aug. 30, Hurricane Irene swept through town and did extensive damage to the 217 LED lights Morris and a team of volunteers had assembled along the raised posts just beyond Pier 49. Now the sunset picnic has been postponed until 7:17 p.m., Aug. 31, to give workers a day to repair the damage (as you can see in the image). Speakers such as Morris, Charles Renfro of DS R, Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal and Google and Project Software Engineer Adam Berenzweig will deliver opening remarks, with an after party immediately following the reception.

Reflecting the Stars will continue twinkling over the Hudson River every night, from sunset to midnight, through Oct. 25. For more information (or to dedicate a star), visit www.thewindmillfactory.com.

     

Lighten Up! "Reflecting the Stars" Opens at Pier 49

Now that that the Hudson has calmed down in our neck of the woods following Hurricane Irene, tonight might be a good night to stop by the opening of Jon Morris' "Reflecting the Stars" at Hudson River Park. Morris, creative director of collective the Windmill Factory, has placed 217 LED light "stars" atop the decaying posts popping out of the Hudson near Pier 49 to raise awareness about air light pollution in New York City (Indeed, local readers likely have "What are...'stars?'" think balloons over their heads right now.).

Even neater, visitors on shore can press buttons to highlight constellation patters within in the lights that are otherwise obscured by the city's haze. The installation will be up starting today through October 25th, from sunset to midnight, as is tied to Climate Week NYC September 19th-26th. Here are some shots of "Reflecting the Stars" all lit up as well as photos of the installation process.

Reflecting the Stars Splashes Constellations on the Hudson

By Alexander George

New York City’s light pollution leaves the stars invisible to the unassisted eye, making the city feel “like living in a low-ceilinged room,” according to artist Jon Morris.

In response, the Brooklyn transplant created Reflecting the Stars, an art installation that re-creates constellations on the surface of the Hudson River. The display, unveiled earlier this week after a delay caused by Hurricane Irene, brings the natural wonder of the night sky down to sea level off Pier 49.

“I grew up in Kentucky, and I’d go lay out on the pier and look at the stars,” Morris told Wired.com. “You think about what happens when you can’t see stars. Are we losing our sense of humility?”

Off the west side of Manhattan, near 11th Street, Morris and his collaborators have installed 201 lights on the stray pylons of an abandoned pier. The lights are activated by a nearby plaque, which visitors can operate to evoke the pattern of a real constellation on the water’s surface. As the tide rises and falls, the lights will take on different patterns. As Morris says, “Nature consumes the installation.”

     

The project began as a guerilla art installation. “I was thinking I’d just grab some lights, jump in, and attach them,” Morris said, but he thought it was too beautiful a concept to install with haste.

The idea went beyond haphazard wires and waterproof lights. “The lights needed to disappear and not disrupt the beauty of the wood posts,” he said.

Morris began with no knowledge of electronics, but fulfilling his vision for Reflecting the Stars meant adopting some major science. He worked with industrial designer Andy Baker to design the lights; when the question of compensation came up, Baker just asked that Morris take him to his first Burning Man festival in Nevada.

Morris and Baker tried every way to make the lights work, but they kept running into problems with the solar charging sustaining bulb life. Jon reached out to a friend of a friend from his Indonesian dance ensemble, and soon Google software engineer Adam Berenzweig came on board.

Berenzwieg had to realign his expertise. Rather than working with servers where memory is measured in terabytes, the lights for which he was writing software held around 1 kb of data. “I would spend an hour debugging and realize the problem was that I would overwhelm it with debugging code,” Berenzwieg said.

The problem was power consumption. The lights had to conserve power during the day and run at a steady power level at night, all while self-monitoring battery life. “I designed a radio protocol to run every five seconds,” pacing the power output, Berenzwieg said.

Once they finalized the light setup — each unit consists of eight LEDs with four white and four blue lights, a small battery, and an integrated solar panel — they had to be sure the lights were ready to go. “We covered it with a marine sealant,” Morris said. “We could scrape at it and smash it, but once we set them, we couldn’t fix them if we wanted.”

‘Blue does crazy things with your eye along the visible spectrum.’

The last days of testing were conducted on the roof of Morris’ apartment building. They decided to go with the blue lights. “Blue does crazy things with your eye along the visible spectrum,” he said. More importantly, the blue light distinguishes the constellations from the New Jersey skyline.

Once Berenzwieg and Morris finalized the design, the lights were set in pipe casings that would rust and decay with the wood upon which they were set.

When the lights were ready for mounting, Morris and five other eager volunteers paddled out to the jagged pylons in canoes, donned wetsuits and lifejackets, and entered the Hudson’s opaque water. “Everyone wanted to come and install them,” Morris said. “‘They were saying, ‘Enough of this coming over to solder diodes. We want to get in the water.’”

     

Morris and his installers took four and a half hours to set up the lights. They arrived at high tide and rode the flow from the highest pylons down to the lowest, affixing each light with a zip tie, legs akimbo, clinging to the barnacle-encrusted wood.

At Reflecting the Stars‘ unveiling, after speakers discussed light pollution and the importance of humility in the face of stars, a woman whose mother had recently died came to spread her ashes across the lights. She spoke about how her mother would be moving on to a new galaxy this way.

The lights will be on display as long as the LEDs last.

     

Full List of Coverage:

Adaequatio: http://adaequatio.es/blog/

All Green Info: http://allgreeninfo.com/200-solar-powered-leds-light-up-nyc-s-hudson-river-for-reflecting-the-stars/

Antenna Magazine: http://www.antennamag.com/online/2011/09/reflecting-the-stars-a-solar-powered-light-instalation-on-the-hudson/

Apartment Therapy: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/the-weekend-guide-august-26-2011-national-local-online-sales-and-events-calendar-154428

Architizer: http://www.architizer.com/en_us/blog/dyn/28340/28340/

Arch Paper: http://blog.archpaper.com/wordpress/archives/22725

Art Cards: http://artcards.cc/newyork/show/28540-The-Windmill-Factory-Reflecting-the-Stars-Recreating-The-Night-Sky-in-The-Hudson-River-curated-by-Jon-Morris-Hudson-River-Park

BOMB Magazine: http://bombsite.com/issues/1000/articles/5366

Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-02/tiesto-headlines-electric-zoo-lauryn-hill-trinity-s-bach-n-y-weekend.html

Climate Week NYC: http://www.climateweeknyc2011.org/events/2011-09-25

Cool Green Mag: http://coolgreenmag.com/2011/08/30/200-solar-powered-leds-light-up-nyc%E2%80%99s-hudson-river-for-%E2%80%98reflecting-the-stars%E2%80%99/

Curbed: http://ny.curbed.com/tags/reflecting-the-stars

Dexigner: http://www.dexigner.com/news/23700

Dwell Magazine: http://www.dwell.com/articles/reflecting-the-stars.html

Editor at Large: http://www.editoratlarge.com/interiordesignevents/reflecting-the-stars-sunset-launch-picnic

I4u: http://www.i4u.com/related_articles/01Yfgfmcxj5SH

Inhabit: http://inhabitat.com/nyc/217-solar-powered-leds-light-up-the-hudson-river-for-reflecting-the-stars/

Flavorpill: http://flavorpill.com/newyork/events/2011/8/31/reflecting-the-stars

Lowe Counsel: http://www.lowecounsel.com/blog/2011/09/wishing-star-preserving-art-stargazing

     

My Architecture: http://www.my-architecture.com/news/reflecting-the-stars-recreating-the-night-sky-in-the-hudson-river

NY Observer: http://www.observer.com/2011/09/the-stars-come-out-in-the-hudson/

NY Press: http://www.nypress.com/blog-9624-star-light-star-bright.html

NY Times: http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/10/06/arts/100000001096048/artsbeat-october-6-2011.html?scp=1&sq=reflecting%20the%20stars&st=cse

On Hudson: http://onhudson.typepad.com/onhudsoncom/2011/09/reflecting-the-stars-pier-49-on-hudson.html

Paper Magazine: http://www.papermag.com/2011/08/is_there_anything_dreamier_tha.php

Sara Cara: http://saracera.com/a-starry-night-on-pier-49-created-by-209-sola

Short & sweet: http://www.shortandsweetnyc.com

Socializ Arq: http://socializarq.com/architecture-news/reflecting-manhattan%E2%80%99s-stars-onto-the-hudson

Socially Superlative: http://sociallysuperlative.com/2011/08/25/the-windmill-factorys-reflecting-the-stars-recreating-the-night-sky-in-the-hudson-river/

Village Voice http://www.villagevoice.com/events/reflecting-the-stars-2917458/

Wired: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/09/reflecting-the-stars/

For more information, contact www.Sparkplug-pr.com.