(Above) Rendering of a lighting sculpture proposed for the underside of L tracks along Wabash Avenue. (Click on image to view larger version.)

12-Jun-15 – It may be up to Kickstarter to light up Wabash Avenue. Two men behind a public art proposal to install programmable LED tubes on the underside of L tracks say they need $50,000 to get their project started and will launch a 30-day Kickstarter campaign in less than two weeks

Jack Newell and Seth Unger have been working on their “Wabash Lights” proposal for nearly four years and have developed a prototype. With $50,000, they say they can install and test 48 feet of lights.

“The beta-test lights will be used to test vibrations, weather, traffic and allow us to better understand the interactive components of the design,” wrote Newell and Unger in an email to supporters on Thursday. “It will also give us a huge amount of awareness for our project. Our hope is we can ride that wave of momentum into a capital campaign to fund a full installation of lights along a two block stretch of Wabash Avenue.”

(Above) Jack Newell (left) and Seth Unger (right).

Unger says they chose Wabash because unlike the glitz and glamour of Michigan Avenue or historic State Street, Wabash is “the people’s corridor.”

“It’s the guy that pushes a laundry cart at the Palmer House. It’s the woman that’s worked at Marshall Field’s or Macy’s for the last 30 years.”

By transforming the Wabash stretch of the L into an interactive light canvas, Unger says they hope to “inspire people to see what’s great about Wabash.”