Food for the Eyes and Ears

By Josh Tyrangiel, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Carolina A. Miranda, Michael Brunton/London, David Lau, Richard Lacayo

A PLACE CALLED VERTIGO

Willie Williams never intended to change the way people watch rock concerts. Growing up in the late '70s, all he really wanted was to get out of Sheffield, England. "So I ran away to London to join the circus," says Williams, "and the circus at that time was punk rock." Punk rock had a visual aesthetic, but it started and ended with the pierceable parts of its players' bodies. At 19, Williams, whose love of music trumped his aptitude for it, cozied up to his favorite band, Stiff Little Fingers, and talked the group into letting him design its stage show. When the Fingers broke up in 1982, he called his new favorite band. "They happened to be named U2."

Ever since, Williams, 46, has moved with U2 from clubs to arenas to stadiums, revolutionizing concert visuals at every step. From the seven Trabants (compact cars built in East Germany) he hung from the rafters of U2's early '90s Zoo TV tour to the giant beaded LED curtains of the recent Vertigo shows, he has turned concrete caverns into spaces that drip with mood. And when the music starts, Williams, who pioneered the integration of video and light into a single element, turns the sets into an extravaganza that enhances but never competes with the sound.

In addition to his rock work, Williams has taken on the Kronos Quartet ("The equipment can't be merely quiet, it has to be silent") and is brainstorming ways to light the revitalized South Bank Centre on the Thames. But he still gets his greatest thrill watching people watch his work. When Williams went to a Vertigo concert with artist Julian Opie, whose minimalist figures were incorporated into the show's visuals, Opie couldn't disguise his envy. "No one," he said, "ever applauds at an art gallery." --By Josh Tyrangiel

HERE COMES THE SUN

If the contemporary art world has had anything like a blockbuster in recent years, it would have to have been The Weather Event, Olafur Eliasson's wildly popular installation in the Great Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern in London. In a nimble rethinking of the atmospheric sublime, Eliasson mirrored the hall's 115-ft. ceiling, then hung from it a patently artificial but weirdly persuasive "sun" made from 144 yellow lightbulbs behind a giant semicircular screen. Then he pumped the room full of mist. During a six-month run that ended in March 2004, Eliasson's make-believe sky drew some 2 million visitors. A lot of them spent long stretches lying on their backs, gazing blissfully upward.

Eliasson, 39, who lives in Berlin, was raised in Denmark by Icelandic parents, so perhaps his yearning for light was carried in his Nordic bloodlines. But while he has been inspired by James Turrell and Dan Flavin, artists who use pure light as their medium, his purpose isn't merely to explore light's mystery and power. And though he has a decided sense of humor--one early work was a simple rainbow created in a spray of mist--minimalist performance-art jokes are the least of what he has in mind. What Eliasson cares about are the ways we create and sustain our own realities and the part played by shared experience in the tantalizing fabrication we call life. He likes to call his works "devices for experiencing reality."

You get a sense of what that might mean with Inverted Mirror Sphere, the most irresistible piece in his recent show in New York City. A massive spiral globe light assembled from triangular bits of mirror, it shoots light all around the room in lacework patterns. What, you say--a high-concept disco ball? Absolutely. And a reminder, too, that the sun is not the only bright ball that can bring people together while it gives off some glorious vibes. --By Richard Lacayo

Words That Glow in the Dark

For a graffiti artist, Evan Roth has an unusual rapport with the police. Case in point: he was doing his thing on New York City's Lower East Side one night when the cops pulled up in cruisers. Instead of pulling out handcuffs, they stopped to admire his craft.

That's because Roth and his partner James Powderly are pioneers of no-mess graffiti. Drawing on Powderly's background in military robotics and Roth's expertise in architecture, they have invented new ways to leave their mark on the city without defacing it. Their latest development is called the "throwie"--a cluster of LEDs attached to a battery and small magnet. A bunch of throwies can be tossed at any iron surface to create instant graffiti. Alternatively, a tag can be spelled out in advance on a T-shaped "night writer" and slapped onto metal surfaces at improbable heights.

Dubbing themselves the Graffiti Research Lab and backed by Eyebeam, a not-for-profit dedicated to patent-free open-source technology, Roth and Powderly set their invention loose on the Internet, where it quickly developed a passionate following. Others were soon adding improvements the duo had never thought of, such as timers and on-off switches. A website sprang up selling throwie kits--much to Roth's delight. "We want to get people excited about using public spaces," he says. "And get them excited about art." --By Ta-Nehisi Coates and Carolina A. Miranda

REINVENTING GUNPOWDER

As a young artist in the the southern Chinese city of Quanzhou, Cai Guo-Qiang liked the effects he got by lighting gunpowder poured on a canvas, a process that tended to set his canvases on fire. He has been playing with fire--and ephemeral art forms--ever since. His art today draws on a wide range of disciplines (from feng shui to astrophysics) and materials (from vending machines to roller coasters). But gunpowder--the medium that brought him international fame--remains one of his favorites.

Cai, 48, moved in 1986 to Japan, where he began his Projects for Extraterrestrials, artworks designed to be large and loud enough to communicate with outer space. Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters, for example, laid a trail of fire more than six miles beyond the wall's western terminus. Another project, Transient Rainbow, celebrated the Museum of Modern Art's temporary relocation from Manhattan to Queens with a seven-color arc of fireworks over New York City's East River.

Cai says he was originally drawn to explosives as a form of "liberation from [the] social and artistic pressures" of living in China. He worries that true originality is still lacking in his native land: "We have a long and very difficult road ahead of us." --By David Lau

The Height of Folly

You might think the spectacular cliffs and needle-like volcanic pinnacles that loom like a menacing picture postcard over the northeastern coast of the Isle of Skye in the Scottish Hebrides would have little need of adornment. But adorning unlikely physical spaces--natural and man-made--is what Angus Farquhar does. Farquhar, 44, is the founder of a Glasgow-based environmental-arts organization called NVA nva.org.uk that for nearly 15 years has been bringing Hollywood-scale lighting and acoustic effects to unusual places in Europe--a shipyard, a tramway, a gorge, a glen.

The project on the Isle of Skye--lighting an entire mountain known as the Storr--was Farquhar's most ambitious. Unfolding Landscape took four years of planning and paperwork, cost about $1.8 million and used 22 tons of lights and rigging. The effect, when the weather cooperated and the Scottish mist was just right, drew raves and won Britain's most prestigious lighting-design award. For six weeks last summer, some 6,500 visitors--200 a night--donned boots and waterproofs, picked up headlamps and walking sticks, and made the strenuous two-mile trek to the base of the cliffs, accompanied by snatches of music and Gaelic poetry whispered from the hills.

Not everyone was impressed. A reviewer for The Scotsman, who attempted the climb on a windy night and made it only halfway up, compared the work to wrapping a mountain with a bow. ("Beautiful mountain, could you take the bow off, please?") And even Farquhar admits the piece may have gone a step too far. His more modest projects--an illuminated path through a lovely Scottish glen, a festival of light showcasing Glasgow's architectural treasures--tend to be more successful, exploring hidden layers of meaning in familiar places by literally shedding new light on them. --By Michael Brunton/London