project overview
As part of an expansive exhibition of his work, titled Particular Matter(s), The Shed commissioned Tomás Saraceno to construct a new artwork which would take full advantage of their soaring multipurpose space, The McCourt. Free the Air: How to hear the universe in a spider/web, was a 95-foot pressurized sphere inside which visitors lay on a taught web-like net floating 40-feet above the ground in order to experience vibrations derived from the movement of particles in the air, similar to the way spiders relay information through vibratory mechanisms.
The Powerhouse Arts Public Art team was hired to assemble and install a technically complex and uniquely designed lighting sculpture, itself encased in a 17-foot pressurized orb, and hung high inside the immersive expanse, like a ghostly sun.
