Welcome to the Land of Light

Welcome to the Land of Light is a public artwork by Henry Tsang that explores intercultural communication and technology's role in bringing people together. The original fiber optic cable lighting system was updated in 2022 with computer-controlled LEDs, allowing for the addition of a third version of the text in Morse Code. The message in Morse Code is conveyed through colored bands of light that are meant to evoke the experience of viewing a moving vessel from different perspectives.

Our Applications Engineering team created a custom Microsoft Excel tool to the Chinook phrase into Morse Code and then into images of colored spaces representing the dips and dashes. They then took those images to create scrolling videos of the same aspect ratio as the installation, then input them into the Pharos designer program to map them onto the pixels. They also provided line and detail drawings, as well as controls and programming. The program runs from dusk to dawn and lasts for 2 hours and 16 minutes in each direction, switching directions and colors throughout the night.