Electric Fountain Lights up Rockefeller Center

Electric Fountain, a spectacular public artwork by British artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster, will illuminate the Plaza at Rockefeller Center though April 4 from 6 a.m. to midnight. The 35-ft. high, 3-D, steel, light sculpture weighs 61,000 lbs., and contains 3,390 LED bulbs and 576 ft. of neon tubing. The fountain design and sequencing replicates streaming and splashing water.

The installation evolved from a drawing on a scrap of paper to a million dollar project that’s likely to be seen by roughly 250,000 people daily.

A team of experts from Aachen, Germany spent over a year fabricating Electric Fountain from a rough sketch provided by Noble and Webster, and they also helped install it. Overseeing the team were Yvonne Force Villareal and Doreen Remen, who run the Art Production Fund, a nonprofit organization that presents public art around the city. Also on hand were two members of a production team from Tishman Speyer Properties, an owner of Rockefeller Center.

Noble and Webster have worked together since they were art students in the late 1980s. They’ve gained an international following for creating illuminated signs in shapes like hearts and dollar signs or with words like “Forever” and “Yes.”

Three years ago, the couple mentioned to Mark Fletcher, an art adviser who has long championed their work and is a board member of the Art Production Fund, that they wanted to do a project at Rockefeller Center. What they first had in mind was a giant, 3-D version of “Toxic Schizophrenia,” a 1997 work that depicts a giant, red, illuminated heart that drips blood, with a jeweled dagger plunged into its center.

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Rockefeller Center rejected the proposal. “New York wasn’t ready for blood after 9/11,” Ms. Webster explained. So the couple shifted to more comfortable territory: a fountain.

In 1996, they created a 2-D fountain that was essentially a light sculpture. Ms. Webster said she and Mr. Noble had been obsessed with lights since their art school days in Nottingham and visited the fairgrounds by night. “The fair came to town once a year during the dull winter months, and all the students would hang out there,” she said. “We became especially fascinated with the lightbulbs that were used, ones that would chase each other in a sequential line.”

Some Gypsies who worked at the fair told the couple where they could purchase such lights, and Noble and Webster began incorporating them in their art.

Once their proposal for a giant fountain was approved, the couple researched the Rockefeller Center’s art and architecture. “In the foyer of Radio City, there’s an amazing mural that depicts the fountain of youth, so fountains are in its bones,” Noble said. Noble also quoted from The Art of Rockefeller Center, a 2005 book by Christine Roussel: “The Rockefellers knew the future would concentrate on the electric arts of sound and light.”

The couple visualized the temporary sculpture as a modular jigsaw puzzle that can easily be taken apart, reassembled and shipped safely.

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The million-dollar cost of the project is being underwritten by Lexus, the car maker, and Jeffrey Deitch, the couple’s New York City dealer. When the installation is dismantled on April 4, the artists hope it will have found a permanent home.

The artists were also adamant that it be energy efficient. They spent months researching LEDs and, in the end, ordered them custom made from a Chinese manufacturer. “These LED bulbs will draw less juice than the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree,” Webster said.