Iluminarc at Mute Meadow, Art Installation in Londonderry, Northern Ireland

	Photo: Brian Morrison Photography

Iluminarc has announced the use of its Ilumipod Inground 36 IP in a public art installation in Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

Known as Mute Meadow, the installation features sculptures, punctuating a river's edge, that apparently and are uplit by undulating colored light. This light is programmed to give Mute Meadow the appearance of a living thing. By night, it's an organic, ever-changing entity with colored lighting that mimics sounds. By day, the sculptures take their lighting cues from the sun, shifting shadows cast by rolling overhead clouds.

The sculptures are scattered along the bank of the River Foyle -- 80 of them total grouped in pairs with 40 Iluminarc Ilumipod Inground 36 IP fixtures nestled between each pair. The piece, by London-based artists Vong Phaophanit and Claire Oboussier, is the largest public artwork on the island of Ireland. It highlights a new stage Derry ~ Londonderry as it transforms itself from a city of conflict to the UK's first City of Culture in 2013, opening its doors to visitors from across the world.

To light these pairs of reed-like steel structures, each LED-fitted Ilumipod Inground 36 IP wash light was carefully encased in a custom structure and incorporated into the landscape. The lights were designed to match the stained glass windows of the neighboring Guild Hall. Each of these 12 windows was translated into a color palette of five colors (for a total of 60 colors lighting the entire piece). The specification of the in-ground fixtures as well as the lighting design and programming were performed by Neon Circus, of Saffron Walden, Essex.

Neon Circus wrote software to collate the lights with the random sound bites that make up the "breathing pattern" of the piece. The company spent weeks on the project, staggering the dimming curves to accompany the right audio triggers that mixed the light from each color palette. The goal was to achieve a look that was "unpredictable within reason."

Mute Meadow has been in development for six years. The artists collaborated with Verbal Arts Centre to capture sounds (verbal and musical) from the people of Derry, Londonderry with the core purpose to represent "the 'breath' of the city, beyond narratives, translated into light."