In the beginning, there was light...
Our Story
What we love about LED Art and Experiences is their ability to captivate in a visceral way and inspire joy. They create magical moments that we get to share with friends, loved ones, and even complete strangers.
So how did we end up here? Creating LED or digital art wasn’t exactly a profession we could aspire to as children, like an astronaut, musician, or athlete!
The best answer we have is that each of us were drawn to this space from a series of unique experiences we individually had. The color+light team is an extended group of over 15 artists, engineers, designers, fabricators, and producers. Our paths and backgrounds vary as much as our skill sets and interests, yet the core of our team found ourselves coming together to work on LED and digital art projects in San Francisco, California, between 2013 and 2017.
Our roots can be traced back to a 2013 Burning Man project - when some crazy people got together to build an installation called the “Sugarcubes”. The project was a beautiful mess of electrical wiring and extruded aluminum lined with LEDs. It was an absolute hit at the festival.
Soon after, inquiries came in - people wanted to bring "the cubes" to their events. The experience the installation created was nothing like anyone had seen before, and eventually, a company called Symmetry Labs was formed from it.
Over the next couple years, the cubes grew to be seen at events around the country and were refined into a much more robust, foldable professional lighting fixture. Brand activations for Nike and Google, interactive LED dancefloors, and touring lighting shows were created. As both the company and its installations grew in popularity, so did the network of people that contributed to the projects. There was a small core of people who worked at Symmetry Labs full time, but many others in the company’s orbit came through to hang out at the company HQ in San Francisco. Over time, an amazing communiy of people contributed their energy and skillsets to producing events, building technology, and spreading the folklore.
Clients started asking for even larger-scale and more custom installations. Our first massive custom project was called the “Winter Suns” - and was installed in the Seaport District of New York City in Winter of 2017.
Soon after came opportunities to build other large installations - and the core team spent much of 2018 and 2019 traveling around the world to install these larger than life creations. An enormous LED tree is Oslo, Norway. A sprawling flower garden on the island of O‘ahu in Hawaii.
In executing on these installations, we learned how to design and engineer hardware for extreme weather conditions. How to manufacture components in large volumes in China. How to bring in heavy machinery operators and riggers to build things bigger than we ever imagined. How to pre-program and schedule out lighting content to be played around the clock. We designed immersive lighting experiences for millions of people around the world.
In late 2019 and early 2020, the core team at Symmetry Labs ventured out to other projects.
This is when color+light was born. We strive to continue to push the boundaries of what is possible with art and technology. To continue to do larger and more magical scale LED art installations. We’ve also spun up a line of products, to make immersive lighting experiences more intimate and bring them to more people. These products are called: Fluora
We live in a new world. We are - all of us - are slowly emerging from a time of great hardship. The pandemic brought a lot of darkness for many. We hope to illuminate and help others blossom as the world heals and reconnects.