HALOS for NYC

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

HALOS for NYC captured beams of sunlight reflected off three, large, computer-controlled mirrors (called heliostats) atop a Battery Park City residential tower 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 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.” It might also suggest, however, the nearby Poets House, or New York Public Library branch, or, perhaps, the contents of an ordinary apartment. HALOS was located on Murray Street at the intersection of River Terrace. It opened in June 2009 and continued for approximately two years.