TrueCar L.E.D.

For the Santa Monica Twilight Concert Series, we turned ten thousand people into one instrument. An interactive light sculpture that read the crowd's energy, sound and sentiment, and answered in colour. Light. Emotion. Data.

The Twilight Concert Series is a Santa Monica institution. Every summer, ten thousand people gather on the pier for free shows by the ocean. TrueCar, headquartered a few blocks away, wanted to give something back to the neighbourhood it called home.

So we pitched them a crazy idea. Take everything a concert generates. The energy, the movement, the emotion. And turn it into light. We called it L.E.D. Light, Emotion, Data.

Overview

The commission

A sponsored light installation for TrueCar at the Santa Monica Pier. Concept and creative direction by Justin Evergreen, produced with Tool of North America and interactive artist Gmunk.

10,000+

Concertgoers a night, every one of them an input to the piece.

Define

Just as TrueCar turns data into a fair price, we would turn the audience's data into light. Not EDM, not sensory overload. Something warm, closer to a campfire for ten thousand people. The strategy was simple. Make the crowd the artist, and the sculpture the thing they play.

The idea

Turn a concert into light.

Mirror-clad spires inspired by the curved pipes of a church organ

Create

The form was drawn from the curved spires of classical church organs. Tall mirrored pipes arranged in layered curtains, holding thousands of LEDs and reflecting the pier back at itself by day. At night it came alive. People could draw light with a wave of the hand, watch the music paint itself across the spires, and upload a photo to see the crowd's mood rendered in colour.

A visitor silhouetted against the glowing sculpture

The sculpture lighting up the pier at night

Imagine the pier is one big instrument, and ten thousand people are playing it at once. That is what this is.

TrueCar Presenting partner, Twilight Concert Series

Commit

We sold the concept through to TrueCar, then built the team to make it real. Tiny Rebellion as agency, Tool of North America in production, and interactive director Gmunk leading the light and the code. One idea, one summer, one very large machine for feeling.

The result

For a few nights, a car company became the most alive thing on the pier. Ten thousand strangers waving at a sculpture, watching their own energy ripple back as light. TrueCar did not sponsor the concert. They became part of it. That is what it looks like to define what a tech company can be on Silicon Beach.