Charlie Gadeken Sculpture

UNDERWIRE

LED Tree Sculpture Aurora Will Light Up Burning Man

Self-taught sculptor Charlie Gadeken likes to play with fire, as evidenced by his blazing body of blowtorch artwork. But for his latest piece, Aurora, the San Francisco-based kinetic wizard has chosen LEDs to light up a massive tree that's programmed to mutate colors from day to night.

How ambitious is Gadeken? Here's his description of Aurora, a sculpture reminiscent of Avatar's bioluminescent Tree of Souls that will be unveiled at this year's Burning Man festival: "It's a weeping willow tree that's 35 feet tall with a 45-foot canopy," Gadeken told Wired.com in an e-mail. "During the daytime, 5,000 copper leaves will flicker from light to dark, shimmering as the breeze travels across the surface of the tree. At night, the 30,000 LEDs that line the tree will light up, change color and make the tree shimmer in a completely different way."

Gadeken, a high-school dropout who created 500-foot-wide paintings before getting into flame-based art 15 years ago, wants to find a permanent home for Aurora after its Burning Man debut this August. For the year-round iteration of the piece, he said, LEDs would follow the seasons, "changing from green in the spring through the autumn colors to winter white."

Gadeken launched a Kickstarter campaign Tuesday to raise funds for the all-seasons Aurora. Check the gallery above to learn more about Aurora and Gadeken's previous experiments in light and sound.