Buckyball

The Madison Square Park Conservancy has rotating exhibits throughout the year -- usually very large, illuminated ones. I walked by the below exhibit last night and there was a DJ playing ambient techno and zero-gravity recliners surrounding the glowing "Buckyball." I stopped and watched and listened and fell into artist Leo Villareal's aesthetic trap: to find order from chaos. The ball is lit by randomly programmed LED lights, but from the way they change color and move from panel to panel it appears as if there is some pattern. 

As the Conservancy's blurb puts it: "BUCKYBALL will trigger neurological processes within the brain, calling on our natural impulse to identify patterns and gather meaning from our external environment."

Just for a minute -- makes you really wonder about the chaos of the city -- especially with Mr. Empire State Building glaring down at the park. How much of our urban experiences are truly chaotic, made coherent only by our subjective interpretation? How much of what I do every day actually makes sense? (On some days it feels like very little, which is what working in an office will do to you.)

This is a dangerous exhibit. If more people took a look at this during their lunch break, they might quit their jobs!