In 2008, Calle del Pez Street in Madrid was taken storm by the anonymous Light Artists, Luzinterruptus, as they covered each and every street lamp on the block with red lampshades. They have since done over 170 different light art pieces in locations across the globe, including, but not limited to, New York City, Toronto, and Melbourne.
Their name, “Luzinterruptus,” essentially breaks down into “Luz,” or “light,” “interrupt us.” Which is a pretty good summation of their goal as an artistic group: take lights and combine them with everyday objects in order to “shed some light” on some pressing social issues. Their typical tools are fluorescent lights, however they also use LEDs and Glowsticks from time to time.
Some of their pieces:
This is a shot of the aforementioned “The Intimate Lights of La Calle Del Pez.” The goal of this piece was to take an urban area, filled with bustling people, and use the lighting in an effort to make the area feel more “lived in” and “intimate.”
This is a piece named “Under Nuclear Threat.” It was displayed in Besançon, France and used a kind of sinisiter-looking scarecrow dressed in a hazmat suit to represent the looming threat that Nuclear war puts us under.
This is a personal favorite of mine called “Literature vs. Traffic.” The one pictured above is from their most recent display of it in Toronto, but they’ve also done it in NYC, Melbourne, and Madrid. Basically, they took over a street for a full day and just covered it with books that had lit up pages. The goal was to take a busy and bustling environment and completely transform it into a quiet space. Visitors were allowed to take home any of the books that they wanted from the display.
Here, we have the Plastic Island. This particular instance of it was in Trafalgar Square, but the original was in the waters of Portugal. The piece is a play on the statement that the Eighth Continent of the world is made of plastic. The goal was to alert people of the effects that their pollution has on the environment.
This last piece is called “Street Heartbeats.” It was a commissioned piece located in Tartu, Estonia. Luz had a photographer take pictures of thousands of locals, and used those images to create illuminated bags of red water, representing the heart of the city.