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Legal Sea Foods

Corporate Headquarters, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

It colorfully lights everything from casinos and concerts, to homes and gardens… and now Color Kinetics’ intelligent LED lighting tells visitors to Boston Harbor about the current wind conditions.

Massachusetts-based sculptor David Tonnesen was asked to create a unique piece for Legal Sea Foods’ corporate headquarters in a landmark location alongside Boston’s historic waterfront. The end result? A graceful, 45-foot metal cod fish whose scale-like rotors and color-changing eye communicate wind and sea conditions based on the Marine Beaufort Scale.

Taking its cue from Boston Harbor breezes, the fish’s 30”-diameter eye changes color via five concealed ColorBlast® 12 LED light fixtures that are programmed and controlled with a combination of ColorPlay® authoring software and iPlayer® 2. The color changes represent varying wind speeds according to the Beaufort Scale, which was originally developed in 1805 by Sir Francis Beaufort as a system for estimating wind strengths without the use of instruments. Tonnesen used a relay interface board with a custom designed interface to translate an analog signal to a digital signal, which triggers the ColorBlast units.

The Beaufort Scale ranges from force 0 (calm) to force 12 (hurricane). For example, when the eye is violet with one pulse of light, wind conditions are calm, or 0-1.7 mph. When the eye is green with four pulses of yellow light, wind conditions are moderate, or 12.1-18.9 mph. When a December 2003 snow storm rocked the Boston area, according to Tonnesen, the eye “went crazy,” but withstood the fierce conditions commendably.

Try that with conventional light sources!