International artist and Phoenix native D.A. Therrien’s Beautiful Light to take place along Scottsdale’s Waterfront

Friday, January 16th

Scottsdale Public Art invites you to the one night only performance of D.A. Therrien’s Beautiful Light, rescheduled for January 16th , after postponing the debut of the artwork at December 18th’s Night Lights on the Canal due to inclement weather during the days prior to the event.

Beautiful Light will hang 80 feet above the Arizona Canal. The captivating art spectacle will feature an enormous 50-foot-wide digital display of quartz lamps, called the 4 Letter Word Machine.

Several times throughout the evening (times to be announced), performers will ascend to platforms over the canal to manipulate four 16-foot-square coded "letters" in a dramatic show of flat drum switch technology. Brilliant bolts of white light will scroll through a spectacular and mysterious message, creating what appears to be confusion and chaos. Beautiful Light will be a mesmerizing performance of visual frenzy and methodical messaging, creating an abstract visual language from a string of patterns and complex words.

Beautiful Light is Therrien’s first public experiment with the capabilities of the 4 Letter Word Machine as a visual translation and communications system correlating two technologies—the 4-letter DNA code and the first and most profound human technology, communication. The artwork is among the first art-in-infrastructure projects commissioned by Scottsdale Public Art to engage the canal system as cultural space.

Beautiful Light is commissioned by Scottsdale Public Art in partnership with Starwood Capital Group and Golub Company.

http://www.scottsdalepublicart.org

About D.A. Therrien
The work of D.A. Therrien (who is originally from Scottsdale) examines the interface of man and machine, often incorporating the human body into large-scale rituals of technology. In his large-scale transmissions, artist D.A. Therrien narrates the primal bond of human and biological communications systems as the inseparable building blocks to life and the promise it holds.

http://www.subcutaneous.org/therrienimg.html