Now this is some extreme tech. Starting March 5, the San Francisco Bay Bridge will sport an absolutely mind-boggling light show. The bridge’s west span will feature LED lighting that is just under two miles wide and upwards of 500 feet (152m) high. For the next two years, over fifty million people will experience these LEDs flashing on the bridge. The craziest part is that the lighting pattern is algorithmically generated from weather, wildlife, and traffic, so the patterns never repeat.

After seeing Leo Villareal’s previous light sculptures at the San Jose Museum of Art, Ben Davis (founder of the creative agency Words Pictures Ideas) approached the artist about The Bay Lights concept, and this insane and beautiful project was born. Back in September, six months of wiring work began. From 8am to 5pm, the team is attaching the LED-studded wires to the 300 cables along the bridge — a combined total of 25,000 LED lights. Leo Villareal, the madman and genius behind this endeavor, developed his own software so that each individual light can be triggered independently by the algorithm to create a truly unique masterpiece.

The project will require $8 million to design, make, install, and break down. Thanks to the low power overhead of LEDs, only $11,000 will be needed to power the display per year. That might sound like a lot of money, but an estimated increase of $97 million dollars in local business will probably change your mind. Besides, it’s being funded by donations. As it stands, $5.7 million has been funded, but the remaining $2.3 million needs to be generated to fund the project through to 2015.

The best part is that people interested in donating to the project can actually become part of the display. The “Gift of Light” allows patrons to customize one or more of the lights in the display. A tax deductible donation will allow interested parties to influence one of the largest (and most nerdy) art projects in the world.

If you’re interested in seeing this for yourself, just head to the west span of the bay bridge after March 5 between dusk and midnight. With over 100,000 linear feet of power, fiberoptic, and Ethernet cables being used, this is a technical achievement you won’t want to miss. Art, engineering, and programming are all being used to outstanding effect with this display. Even if you’ll never see the bay lights in person, the sheer audacity of scale is inspiring. Let’s hope that this catalyzes even more large scale mashups of art and technology.

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[Image credit: Matthew Roth]