British artist Antony Gormley has created an installation in New York's Brooklyn Bridge Park comprising 18 kilometres of wound aluminium tubing.

Gormley created New York Clearing for global art initiative Connect, BTS, which likened the look of the looping metal tubes to a "drawing in space".

Rising 50 feet (15 metres) on Brooklyn Bridge Park's Pier 3 overlooking the East River, the structure comprises 18 kilometres (11 miles) of rectangular aluminium tubing arranged like a huge squiggle.

Each piece of tubing measures approximately one inch (25.4 millimetres) and is secured to several others using plastic and metal zip ties. The entire structure is fixed onto the concrete ground using steel spigots.

Gormley said he intended the project to create an interactive public scape at its site, which faces the Manhattan skyline and Brooklyn Bridge.

"I'm asking in our species' disappearance into high density, high-rise urban environments, can we use the space of all as a place like an agora, in which personal truth and subjective feeling can be transmitted from one individual to another?" Gormley said at the installation's opening event this week.

Visitors are encouraged to traverse through the piece by stepping over and walking under the tangled web of metal strips.

"This is an open work," Gormley added. "It doesn't have a skin, you're invited to enter in, you're invited in a way to meet others that you may not have met before."

"It's not a thing that represents something it's a process and we may have finished the construction, but the actual work begins now and will happen now when the citizens of this incredible city come to sniff it out, see what's here."

New York Clearing is among a number of art pieces that Connect, BTS – which was started by the Korean pop band Bangtan Sonyeondan – has commissioned. Others have taken place in cities including London, Berlin, Buenos Aires and Seoul.

For the Brooklyn Bridge project, Gormley and his team worked with Connect, BTS art director and curator Daehyung Lee, LED Engineering and Alta Art Production. Connect, BTS and entertainment company Big Hit funded the project.

"In many ways Gormley's work was a perfect fit for this project, his work explores the commonality of our human experience through our physical form and our relationship to each other and the people around us," said Alta Art Production principal Thomas Arnold.

New York Clearing will be on display at Brooklyn Bridge Park's Pier 3 until 27 March.

Last year, Gormley installed dozens of his iron humanoid sculptures across the Greek island Delos and created a virtual reality experience where users could walk on a digital version of the moon.

Photography is by Christopher Burke.