HALOS for NYC

Battery Park City, New York, New York
June 2009 – March 2011

HALOS for NYC used beams of sunlight reflecting off three, computer-controlled heliostats (large mirrors) mounted atop the Verdesian residential tower in Battery Park City, to reveal a play of words on the pavement below. Inspired, in part, by “The Sundown Poem,” of Walt Whitman, HALOS, tracked the daily movement of light and shadow across lower Manhattan to slowly unscramble six, three-word phrases—WATCH & SEE; SELF & SUN; LEAP & SHOUT; TABLE & BOOK; KISS & TELL; OVER & OUT. 

The painted words come from a variety of sources. “Table & Book,” for example, is inscribed on a 19th-century Shaker “gift drawing.” However, it might also suggest the nearby Poets House or New York Public Library branch, or, perhaps, the contents of an ordinary city apartment. HALOS, was located on Murray Street at the intersection of River Terrace. It opened in June 2009 and continued for approximately twenty-one months.