+ POOL
October 3, 2019
6:00 PM
+ POOL Light is installed in the East River
Working with our friends and partners at Reaktor and at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, we launched a floating LED light sculpture and website that monitors water quality in real-time. Aptly named, + POOL Light, the project was designed by PLAYLAB, INC. and Family New York in collaboration with Floating Point to show folks that the water is not as bad as people might think a majority of the time, and when it is, to show them why.
+ POOL Light. Photo by Iwan Baan. Blue = good water quality
+ POOL Light. Photo by Brett Beyer. Pink = poor water quality
+ POOL Light. Photo by Devereaux
+ POOL Light Water Quality Dashboard. View at water.pluspool.org.
Its a pretty big deal to build something like this, because testing for bacteria in the water usually takes 24 hours to complete, so by the time we finish bacteria level tests, information is already outdated. With the algorithm created by Columbia to change the lights in real-time, we created a system to predict what the bacteria level is in the water at any given time. Even cooler, we were super excited to see that our predictions, based on highly calibrated environmental parameters, were right in line with our traditional lab tests.
Who knew we’d be developing a real-time water quality monitor as part of our effort to swim in the river? Thanks to that little idea for a pool we had back in 2010, we’re working with some super smart, creative people and innovating all over the place!
Kudos to everybody who came out in the rain!
Dong-Ping Wong, Oana Stanescu, Jeff Franklin, Archie Lee Coates IV at the opening
We had an opening celebration on October 3rd for the project and a ton of our friends showed up in the rain to see our plus-shaped lights floating in the river. It was the first time we anchored something into the river and it was pretty cool to see with our friends. It was also the first time we went through a formal permitting process for an in-river construction (well done, Jeff and Kara!) and we learned a lot about what we’ll need to do to permit + POOL once we find a home in NYC.
Learn more about the + POOL Light project and installation here!
+ POOL Light was made possible by the generous support of Heineken and The Howard Hughes Corporation and was supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Water Quality Dashboard was funded thanks to the generosity of Reaktor.
