For this year's Coachella festival, American artist Phillip K Smith III created an installation of shiny cuboids that by day provided a series of mirrors, but by night were transformed into neon towers of light (+ slideshow).
Phillip K Smith III designed the Reflection Field lighting sculpture for the annual Coachella music festival in California, to offer revellers a place for contemplation where they could "explore ideas of colour theory, optics, perception, scale, and technology".
The freestanding mirrors range from small blocks to five-metre-high structures, reflecting the trees and landscape around them.
"By day, the monolithic mirrored volumes of Reflection Field are prisms of earth and sky, wrapped by the surrounding environment," said Smith.
Hidden LED lights illuminate each block after dark, creating windows of colour dotted across the space.
"By night, they become expansive fields of colour that blend and layer through echoes of reflection," added Smith.
Reflection Field was in place for the duration of the two-weekend festival and will be taken down at the end of April.
It is the largest light installation created by the California-based artist, whose previous projects include a desert cabin clad with mirrors to create the illusion of a see-through building.
Last year's Coachella featured a dome of colour-changing balls by Spanish designer Héctor Serrano, while the 2012 Burning Man festival featured huge star-shaped lights.
Photography is by Lance Gerber.
Here's some more text about the project:
Reflection Field
Working in color, light, space, and form, Phillip K. Smith, III creates deceptively simple objects of contemplation, transformation, and interaction. His newest project Reflection Field continues to explore ideas of colour theory, optics, perception, scale, and technology.
Phillip K Smith, III, a Rhode Island School of Design graduate and resident of the Coachella Valley, rose to international acclaim last year with his project Lucid Stead that amalgamated a 70 year old homesteader shack with mirror, LED lighting, and custom electronics to create a 24 hour experience in the isolation of Joshua Tree, CA. Hundreds of people made the arduous trek to see the installation and, as word spread, Lucid Stead quickly became an international phenomenon receiving global recognition both online and in print media. Architect Magazine listed it as one of the "Very Best Projects of 2013" and the Los Angeles Times named Smith as one of the three "Faces to Watch 2014 in Art" alongside the Hammer Museum's senior curator, Ann Ellegood, and multiple Venice Biennale participant, artist Gabriel Kuri.
Reflection Field is a monumental installation that consists of five freestanding volumes of light and mirror scaled as large as 18 feet high and 17 feet wide. In this installation the series of objects are arranged to span a diameter of 100 feet. Reflection Field combines the concepts of Lucid Stead, with the paced, color merging of his Lightworks series and his recent exhibition at the Museum of Art and History in Lancaster, CA. By day, the monolithic mirrored volumes of Reflection Field are prisms of earth and sky, wrapped by the surrounding environment. By night, they become expansive fields of color that blend and layer through echoes of reflection. Spaces become simultaneously infinite and finite, while hues push and pull, saturating and dissolving the surroundings and periphery into pure colour.
As a result of Lucid Stead, Goldenvoice found interest in Smith's work. When the artist described an idea that was "so big it seemed impossible", Paul Tollett of Goldenvoice, decided to do what was necessary to make it happen. Reflection Field will debut in the artist's home town at Coachella 2014 where it will be experienced by more than 200,000 people over the course of two weeks starting April 11, 2014.