INTERNATIONAL GRANDS PRIX

International Grand Prix Art & Photography

Project Virtual Sky

United States California, United States nardulistudio.com

Heaven on Earth

Oklahoma City’s new convention center’s art installation creates a new common language for this city on a plain under a vast sky. Enter Virtual Sky, a synergy of fixed and fluid elements, a layering of form and light and of movement captured in real time.

HI-TECH SKY The suspended structure, imagined by California’s Narduli Studio, spans the two glass public atriums. Within each, anodized titanium forms create an environment inspired by the sky’s movement. Their reflective surfaces respond to light and shadow, reconceptualizing the beauty and changeability of the sky through technology.

COLOR SHIFTS The palette evokes the subtle shifts of color one experiences throughout the day and as seasons change. Within this field of color, a grid of 60,000 points of light connected to a stream of Oklahoma City Data Portals traces weather patterns in real time. Each point of light is individually addressable, allowing for a canvas of infinite visual possibilities.

DIGITAL SIMULACRUM Together, the suspended titanium and light structure create an immersive visual experience, a digital simulacrum that parallels the complexity of the ongoing natural phenomena of the vast, changeable, majestic sky that is so much a part of this city.

DAY & NIGHT From the street, Virtual Sky plays with the ever-changing reflections of the Convention Center curtain wall. In the evening, the animated movement of color is experienced inside and out. Here, the region’s invisible layers of data become the means to activate the public spaces through the powerful and yet ephemeral language of light. Brilliant!