Hyperessay | Artist and Artwork Selection

Artist: Jim Campbell was born in 1956 in Chicago, Illinois. He received degrees in both electrical engineering and mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1978, and is currently living and working in San Francisco, California. As an engineer, Campbell holds more than a dozen patents in the field of image processing and is currently working on HDTV-related products in a laboratory in California.

Artwork: Scattered Light, features nearly 2,000 LEDs encased in standard light bulbs, suspended within a support structure spanning 80 feet in length and standing 20 feet high and 16 feet wide creating a vibrant light grid across the center of Madison Square Park’s Oval Lawn. The LED bulbs, programmed to flicker scattered light, create the illusion of figurative images that explore and reflect the human experience amidst the urban landscape, creating the appearance of giant human shadows crossing a floating 3-D matrix of light. As one travels around the piece, the vantage point alters and the light figures begin to abstract, blurring the boundaries between image and object.