The Laboratory and the Gallery Floor
This week: a supercomputing laboratory takes a 2.5-acre facade, three LED monoliths draw their last shadows in Detroit, 87 pixel battens become stage architecture for Lenny Kravitz, and a press release gets a festival's dates wrong.
Art on THE MART has turned its facade over to a supercomputing laboratory. Where Data Becomes Light, a collaboration between Argonne National Laboratory and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois Chicago, opened on 10 September and runs Thursday through Sunday, 7:30 to 8:00pm, until 15 November. ALCF describes the work as transforming a 2.5-acre facade; the rest of the venue's specification — 556 by 165 feet, eighteen floors, 34 Christie Digital Boxer projectors at 6,000 by 2,620 pixels, the windows disguised from a 3D building model built by lasers — is published for the site in general, not for this commission. Scientific visualization is normally authored for a display wall or a printed figure, at a resolution and a viewing distance its author controls. Here it is read from across the Chicago River by people who did not come for it, at a scale where a rendering decision that reads as a fine gradient on a monitor becomes a forty-foot band of colour. The fall show times moved earlier this season, from 9:00pm to 7:30pm — which tells you something about who the audience turned out to be.
Argonne National Laboratory and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory — Where Data Becomes Light
A supercomputing laboratory's visualization work, projected four nights a week onto THE MART's facade. Michael E. Papka led the science side, Daria Tsoupikova the art and design; Cynthia Noble, director of Art on the Mart, led the creative direction. Pure Dezign handled the projection mapping, with Dominic Glimco and Maison Riley operating the projection systems on the building. The Adler Planetarium's Astrographics shares the same nightly window. On view: Art on THE MART, Chicago — Thursday to Sunday, 7:30 to 8:00pm, through 15 November.
Iregular — Fortunes
Iregular's Fortunes closes in Detroit on 21 September. The studio describes three LED monoliths; the Detroit Institute of Arts, which sited the work in its Great Hall, calls them three 13-foot-tall displays. Cameras placed in front of each interaction zone track human bodies using AI and return them as drawn shadows — a description that appears on the artist's page and nowhere on the museum's. On view: Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit — through 21 September.
via Iregular ↗
Bryan Barancik — Lenny Kravitz Live 2026 Tour
Bryan Barancik built the Lenny Kravitz Live 2026 Tour around 87 Chauvet COLORado PXL Curve 12 fixtures supplied by 4Wall UK, arranged in pods with the battens hung out straight at ninety degrees. The routing mixes indoor and outdoor dates, so the rig had to expand and contract by venue without losing its identity; the pod is the stated answer. Production manager Dave Bruster, lighting designer Mike Gionfriddo, programmers Joe Bay and Chris Fernandez. Chauvet's own newsroom carries nothing on this tour — the account is single-sourced.
Phase 3 AV — 50 Ayrton Rawbeam 350 at Veld
Phase 3 AV bought 50 Ayrton Rawbeam 350 laser-source luminaires and deployed them on one of three stages at the thirteenth Veld Music Festival, Downsview Park, Toronto. Note the dates: Ayrton's release and ACT Entertainment's both say 1 to 3 August, but Downsview Park's own event record gives 31 July to 2 August. The Toronto company supplied lighting, video, staging and truss for that stage. The only people named anywhere are Shane Fine, Phase 3's founder and CEO, and Alex Monast of ACT. No lighting designer is credited for a rig this size.
via Ayrton ↗
Genius Loci Weimar 2026 — Democracy and Society
Weimar — 11 to 13 September. Three winning competition projects on the Temple of Nike, the House of the Weimar Republic and Schiller's House.
Miguel Chevalier — Post-Natural: Living Plankton
Smögen, Sweden — closes 13 September. Projected onto Smögen's pink granite; music by Claude Micheli.
A.A. Murakami — Beyond the Horizon, in The Assault of Illusion
Barcelona — on view through 27 September. Free. Curator-led visits with Enric Puig Punyet run throughout the exhibition, through closing.
Emmit Fenn — The Light We Leave Behind, fourth edition
Los Angeles Arts District — opens 17 September, then four Thursday-to-Sunday weekends through 11 October. Three shows nightly, 120 guests each; the exact address is issued only after a confirmed reservation.
Illumination NYC Light Art Festival
New York — 17 to 19 September, at the newly renovated Wagner Park, Battery Park City. Free, 7:00 to 11:00pm. No 2026 artist list has been published.
ARTECHOUSE — Twilight Zone: Hidden Wonders of the Ocean
Houston — premieres 18 September; New York premieres 19 September. No closing date is published for either city.
via ARTECHOUSE ↗
iMapp Bucharest 2026 — Winners League
Bucharest — 19 and 20 September. Seven unnamed studios map the Palace of the Parliament, Piața Constituției; free.
teamLab — Everything Exists in Infinite Continuity
Chicago — opens 22 September, on view through 21 February 2027. teamLab's first Midwest exhibition, including the North American premiere of Massless Suns and Dark Suns.
Curated by Neves Creative. Every item links to its original source.