The original Voyage design was conceived for installation at the JFK Airport in New York, with the concept that travel is a continuous movement. It's flowing movement and ever-changing 3 dimensional quality is achieved by wrapping crystals over a wire frame. A motion sensor triggers blue LEDs that react to the ongoing rhythm of passengers passing the light and suggests and organic and continuous flow.
“'I really wanted it to be about travel, or at least what travel should be like, which is this uninterrupted movement,'' said Yves Béhar, the designer who created Voyage and who runs the San Francisco company Fuseproject. The chandelier joins other pieces in the terminal by Alexander Calder and the artist-architects Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, and takes advantage of the building's unusually accessible setup.
The 15-foot high double-loop chandelier contains 2,000 blue L.E.D. lights whose illumination waxes and wanes with the rhythms of the airport, thanks to a motion sensor embedded in the sculpture's stainless steel wire frame. That frame is covered with 52,000 Swarovski crystals, which reflect and refract the shifting light. The chandelier's shape is meant to evoke the travel experience. ''There's a mental and emotional voyage that people do when they travel, and they tend to come back to the point of departure,'' Mr. Béhar said. ''The meandering adventures of the mind and the body are expressed by the fluid structure.'' – New York Times, June 23, 2005
Mini Voyage is a scaled-down rendition of an original chandelier conceived by Yves Béhar for Swarovski Crystal Palace. No less impressive in effect, Mini Voyage retains the design qualities of the original, but is approximately 2m in length and contains 10,000 Swarovski crystals. Available as a non-illuminated sculpture or illuminated internally by white LEDs.
The Mini Voyage is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY....more
