Spanish lighting designers Luzinterruptus scattered 10,000 glowing books across the ground at Federation Square in Melbourne this summer for a lighting festival dedicated to reading.

Entitled Literature Versus Traffic, the installation was designed to resemble a river that winds along the pavements and roads of the busy public square.

The designers sourced the discarded books from local libraries and placed LED lights behind the pages of each one to illuminate the printed words.

Over the course of the month they were also able to gradually move the books into different configurations.

On the final day visitors were invited to choose a few to take home, while others were donated to passing drivers through open car windows.

"The objective was to create a symbolic gesture in which literature took control of the streets and became the conquerer of the public space," explained one the anonymous artists.

The installation remained in place throughout June for the Light in Winter lighting festival. Reading was the theme, so the organisers had asked Luzinterruptus to create a scaled-up version of a similar installation they had completed in New York.

Other temporary lighting projects by Luzinterruptus include skips filled with glowing carrier bags and illuminated nipples stuck to statues.

See all our stories about Luzinterruptus »

See more installations on Dezeen »

The post Literature Versus Traffic
by Luzinterruptus appeared first on Dezeen.

Plastic carrier bags glow like lamps from within two skips that Spanish lighting designers Luzinterruptus have placed at the entrance to the Gewerbemuseum in northern Switzerland.

The designers selected the most brightly coloured bags from over 5000 collected from museum visitors and have filled each one with air as if it were a balloon.

The installation, entitled Plastic Garbage Guarding the Museum, accompanies a four-month exhibition that looks at how the culture of using and throwing away plastic bags is representative of consumer society.

The illuminated bags will remain outside the museum for the duration of the show, where their colours will fade and they will become increasingly dirty.

For the opening night the designers also filled a square outside the museum with more of the brightly lit carriers. Some were scattered on the ground as toys, while others were filled with helium and tethered on strings.

The Oh, Plastiksack! exhibition runs until 7 October.

Other lighting projects by Luzinterruptus include an army of glowing scarecrows and a set of stick-on nipples.

See all our stories about Luzinterruptus »

Here's an explanation from Luzinterruptus:

The past month of June we went to Switzerland with our lights, invited by the Gewerbemuseum of Winthertur to form part of the Oh, Plastiksack! , monographic exhibition on plastic bags curated by Susanna Kumschick.

As always, we chose to work in the street, just because we wanted the whole world to be able to see what we were doing and how we were doing it.

The monographic theme being the bags, we wanted to collect the largest number of them from among the inhabitants of the city, our friends at the museum had the wonderful idea of exchanging bags for tickets to visit the exhibitions, a very interesting proposition that helped to collect more than 5,000 bags and a lot of visitors eager to take a free tour of a museum of applied arts as exemplary and didactic as the Gewerbemuseum.

For our piece Plastic garbage guarding the museum, we chose the most colorful and luxurious bags from among the thousands that were donated and with them we filled two large containers that were located on either side of the main door of the building. We placed light inside them and left them for the next 4 months to see how they evolve.

The first few days of the installation were the most striking and spectacular, with all the bags perfectly placed and filled with air. After a few weeks the display was no longer as pleasing to the eye and surely after 4 months it will look truly decrepit.

This, far from worrying us, helps us to make sense of an installation which you can experience, in a visual manner, the reality of plastic bags, objects generally created with the purpose of inviting consumption and building an image that speaks positively about the brand, but that once used, if not carefully recycled, they become very damaging and impossible to remove from the environment.

In addition, on the day of the inauguration, we used more illuminated plastic bags to intervene in the surroundings of the museum, filling a small square with them in which we created a gathering space in which the people could sit and dedicate themselves to finding, for example, those of their favorite stores.

In addition, we presented visitors with floating illuminated trash bags, that the people carried throughout the whole city, filling the sky with small plasticized full moons.

The post Plastic Garbage Guarding the Museum
by Luzinterruptus appeared first on Dezeen.

Guerilla lighting designers Luzinterruptus snuck out in the dead of night to stick 400 illuminated silicone nipples all over statues outside the Public Art Museum in Madrid.

Calling the project Touch! Touch! Nothing will Happen, the designers wanted to make citizens stop and touch the artworks they walk past every day.

Lots of the nipples were stolen on the first night but the installation lasted six days.

Other installations by Luzinterruptus include an army of scarecrows in radioactive suits, fairy lights under autumn leaves and lamps for reading crime novels in dangerous parts of the city.

Israeli student Naama Arbel caused a stir on Dezeen last month with her nipple-shaped lamps - take a look at them here.

Photographs are by Gustavo Sanabria.

Here are some moe details from Luzinterruptus:

This is our last intervention “Touch! Touch! Nothing will happen…

Public art is well represented in Madrid, a multitude of statues and sculptures can be found all over the city, but they give us the sensation that they have been installed in such a way as to make people feel uncomfortable approaching them, touching or interacting with them. The majority are placed on high pedestals, they are surrounded with many security measures or they have been placed in the middle of gardens, which are prohibited to step in.

A good example of this form of exposure to art in the city is the Museum of Public Art in Madrid, an open air space in which some of the most famous Spanish artists of previous generations display their great pieces of sculpture.

In spite of being robust and compact, appropriate to be touched and used, they are inaccessible to the public, except to view. Their pedestals are high, they are illuminated with powerful lights that convert them into slightly uncomfortable pieces and as a definitively deterrent measure, are posted with signs that warn that the space is under the direct surveillance of the municipal police.

The morning of the 26th of September, we decided to approach various statues of said museum, placing 400 silicone nipples, of realistic appearance, pleasant to touch and similar to those of humans.

With this installation we wanted the passers-by who always pass through this area, from big offices and luxurious houses, to become aware of the exhibitive environment and to take time to look and touch without shame. While we were installing it, the night owls that came out of the nearby discos, attracted by the light that our nipples gave off, came closer and looked surprisedly at these curious objects, so alien to the cold surfaces of the sculptures.

And as if it were due to an act of reflex, nobody could avoid moving their hand closer and touching their soft surface, some of them unstuck the pieces that were closer at hand, to make off with such a warm prize, in spite of the surveillance and the hostility of the environment. With this effective call, we got the people to approach the art that makes up their everyday environment, which they hardly notice, and devote some time to looking at it and touching it with delight.

We cannot avoid thinking, with a certain amount of glee, in the final destination of these illuminated nipples, sure that the majority will end up in the glove compartment of some sports car, hidden in some dark drawer of an office, in the trouser pockets of some executive or in the brand name handbags of some early rising women.

We hope that these nipples continue to be happily played with by their owners, while they ask themselves what the heck they were doing stuck to the sculptures on the bridge… and every time they pass by this particular museum, they stop to contemplate the pieces of sculpture, with a more fun and playful attitude.

The post Touch! Touch! Nothing will HappenŠ
by Luzinterruptus appeared first on Dezeen.

An army of 100 scarecrows dressed in glowing decontamination suits kept a sinister vigil over the Dockville Festival in Hamburg earlier this month.

Installed by Spanish designers Luzinterruptus, the figures were supported in regular rows and adorned with nuclear symbols, blank faces and taped-up mouths.

They remained in place for one month.

Luzinterruptus specialise in guerrilla lighting installations, with past project including “cosy” places to relax and read crime novels in undesirable parts of town and autumn leaves with LED lights attached. See all our stories about their work here.

See all our stories about lighting here.

Photos are by Gustavo Sanabria.

The information below is from Luzinterruptus:

The installation Radioactive Control was created for the Dockville Festival in de Hamburg which tried to demonstrate, in a humorous tone, the paranoia that we are suffering from since the escape of radioactive material in Japan, has brought into question the safety systems at the nuclear power plants.

With our mysterious army of 100 illuminated radioactive figures, which advanced threateningly on the natural environment of the festival, we wanted to invite reflection regarding the use and abuse of nuclear energy, cheap in economic terms, but which can cause grave secondary effects for the environment and health, forever irreversible.

Germany has been the first developed country to announce the total abandonment of nuclear energy by 2022, we know that this was not an altruistic decision and has a lot to do with the creation of new and innovative industries, which will make them pioneers in the market.

But just in case they change their minds, we already know that what politicians legislate today, they change tomorrow with impunity, we wanted to simulate, for the festival, a life under the constant threat of nuclear accidents.

Thanks to the people of the Dockville organization for their help and support in putting together the installation and their hospitality during our stay and to all the volunteers who donated their time and abilities so that in the end our army stayed afoot, with a military air, for the month that the festival lasted.

Time of installation: 6 days.

Damages: none.

Exhibition time: 30 days.

The post Radioactive Control by Luzinterruptus appeared first on Dezeen.

Happy New Year! Here's a selection of our favourite New Year cards from designers, including this confusing one from Barcelona Madrid designers Luzinterruptus. Meanwhile Happy New Year from us, thanks for reading and best wishes for 2010.

Above: Boym Partners

Above: MoMA

Above: Rise Industries

Above: Traffic

Above: Bevk Perovic Arhitekt

Above: Matthias Kaeding

Above: BD Barcelona Design

Above: PKSB ARCHITECTS

Above: Studio Gypser

Above: Paul Vickers

Above: Katrin Olina

Update: Studio Lin in New York have sent us three animated New Year cards they designed for clients. Above: Artecnica (Studio Lin also designed the mini site).

Above: Readymade Projects by Studio Lin.

Above: Studios Architecture by Studio Lin.

The post Designer New Year cards appeared first on Dezeen.