Visual Terrain, a leading lighting design firm, has shared details of a project working with the City of Santa Clarita, a bedroom community suburb north of Los Angeles.
The city wanted to make an artistic statement in the middle of its largest community park, Central Park. Senior engineer for the City, Alan Stump, wanted to bring an impression of water to the park and tie it together with a newly commissioned sculpture by New York artist Sujin Lim, When a Cloud Met a Cloud.
Stump contacted Visual Terrain, which had worked with the city on other projects, and challenged the firm to devise a way to evoke a cascade of water alongside the city’s newly installed exercise stairs, allowing it to flow to the sculpture, a distance of approximately 850 feet (260 meters). The project was done with the support of the Santa Clarita Water District.
Visual Terrain developed a show that tells the story of water in five acts. From raindrops to thunderstorms, all the way to evaporation, the cycle of water in nature is celebrated. The result is River of Lights, an ever-changing, twinkling “river” of 172 lights, embedded into the ground and in posts along the stairs.
Inspiration from nature
The nearly three-year-long effort enabled Visual Terrain to combine its experience in municipal projects and the arts, creating a whimsical, meditative, and abstract design that incorporated the practicality of installing lights in a busy and popular public park.
Visual Terrain’s principal lighting designer, Steven Young, took inspiration from both nature and local artists.
Working from several programming palettes inspired by art and photography, he attempted to replicate the way clouds and the sky change colours during a rainstorm, and how the rays of the sun are eclipsed by dark storm clouds. Typically, Young selects two to four colours and applies them to the lighting, programming a sense of movement into the river through changes in lighting colour and intensity.
“Creating the fixture layout of the lights was the easy part,” says Young. “Determining what they actually do, that was the challenge. We met with the city and presented an idea that the lighting should emulate the community, reflect the artists of Southern California, and address the way water is used in this specific area of California.”
Associate principal production manager Steeve Vajk worked with Steven on the programming over several weeks before the project opening:
“I really enjoyed working on the River of Lights,” he says, “despite some of the challenges. Being an outdoor installation, we had no control over the biggest light on the project, the Sun. So we of course could only program at night, and were even more time-limited when trying to set levels specifically intended for the Dusk transition.
“In addition, being such a large installation, there was no single location we could program from which would allow us to see the entire River at once, which necessitated taking multiple walks to see how the entire River was looking, including a number of hikes up the stairs.”
A hit with park visitors
At an opening ceremony attended by thousands of residents, Santa Clarita Mayor Bill Miranda said: “I think it’s spectacular. We worked on this for the last three years, finding the right architects, the right designers, and it all paid off in a spectacular fashion.”
Vajk adds: “The best part was after a few days of programming, we had small kids coming up as we were setting up, excitedly asking when we were gonna turn the lights on. Every night, there would be multiple children running up and down the River, ‘chasing’ the lights as we programmed various patterns.
“Later in the evening, we often heard adults climbing the stairs calling out a disappointed ‘Awww….’ whenever we momentarily turned off the lights, followed by an excited ‘Yay!’ when they came back on.”
Visual Terrain CEO Lisa Passamonte Green says:
“With so many of our projects, the goal is to integrate the lighting into the environment, such that if you see the lights, we haven’t done our job. It’s wonderful to do a project that is the opposite, where the lights themselves are celebrated, and the star of the show.
“25 years after Visual Terrain did the lighting design for the Gateway Pylons at LAX, which is still the largest permanent public art project in the world, it’s wonderful to do something iconic, artistic and permanent in our own backyard in Santa Clarita. It was truly a joy to combine our artistic talents with the beautiful art piece Sujin Lim created for the park.
“Our company motto is ‘Lighting Design for Architecture, Attractions, and the Arts,’ but it is rare when we get to do a project that is all three in one!”
The River of Lights experience runs nightly from dusk until 10 pm, 365 days a year. It is free to the public, and the show changes throughout the year, with special programs on holidays and special events.
Expertise in themed entertainment
Earlier this year, Visual Terrain celebrated its awards success following the 31st Annual Thea Awards Gala. At the event, held at Universal City in Los Angeles, Visual Terrain received its 17th and 18th Thea Awards.
The company earned recognition for its role in show lighting and programming for the Chimelong Spaceship at Chimelong Resort in Hengqin, Guangdong, China, which was awarded a Thea for Outstanding Achievement.
Visual Terrain was acknowledged as a key contributor for lighting design on the team for the Priddy Family Foundation Freedom Theater at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana, which also earned a Thea Award for Outstanding Achievement.
