Artist: RAFAEL LOZANO-HEMMER
Curated by JULIA COOKE
![Lightshow](https://www.thecommononline.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/openair_sketche_2012_07_rlh_004-768x1024.jpg)
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, “Open Air, Relational Architecture”, 2012. Commissioned by the Association for Public Art, Philad
Twenty-four searchlights, all high-powered, were set on rooftops around Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway last September and October. They were programmed, however, to avoid shining their spotlights on any physical objects: no buildings, no naked windows, no trees. Instead, they glimmered straight up into the sky: twenty-four columns of light responding — here solid, there faint, twitching and beating and sweeping across the sky together, then separating — to the voices of Philadelphia residents.