“Swarm Street,” the largest public art installation of the Indianapolis Cultural Trail: A Legacy of Gene & Marilyn Glick, is now underway inside the Virginia Avenue Parking Garage south of Maryland Street, with completion scheduled for late December 2011. And, this project holds a special distinction as the only public art project to be honored by ArtPlace.

Passersbys walking, biking, or driving may rightfully confuse this shaded city block with a regular roadside construction project. Batches of special bricks known as decorative pavers – shaped from rectangle to hexagon – are encased in plastic wrap and stacked in uniformly square piles waist-high, placed adjacent to their final destination. Yards of yellow tape inscribed with the word “CAUTION” flutter in the breeze, safeguarding the freshly-poured concrete from pedestrians. There are a few indicators on the overpass “ceiling” and the pavement of the one-of-a-kind interactive light environment that will surely delight generations of Indianapolis residents and visitors.

“Swarm Street” on the Southeast Corridor of the Trail is not much to look at now, but most transformations begin with humble origins, and this was no different with its challenging “canvas.” Even in broad daylight, the garage is a dark tunnel, and our team has gone to great lengths to turn it into a bright, eclectic passage. (Users on the trail, be it on foot or wheels, will discover their very movement will activate sensors that “embrace” them in a firefly-like swarm as they travel about the path. Talk about a greeting! That’s due to over 2,000 combined LED lights that will be embedded from above and below.)

Designer Vito Acconci of Acconci Studio describes the experience as “one sparkle attracts another, like a magnet.”

One of the impressive parts of the light show is its length, spanning roughly one city block. This was the most challenging part of the Cultural Trail, but organizers felt from the beginning that it offers an opportunity for an amazing creative solution. As a covered, sun-free environment, the space wouldn’t allow for tall trees, beautiful wildflower plantings nor lush green grass, so planners had to find manmade solutions to create a beautiful and interesting aesthetic. The open steel-framework is shaped to look like a canopy of sprawling tree branches creating an artistic version of landscaping.

The street-level section of the trail will have the same uniform high-quality, multi-hued look as the other sections (very distinguished compared to a typical bland urban sidewalk) that are unmistakable to the user.

Brick by brick, we are getting closer to making the innovative “Swarm Street” a reality for Indianapolis residents and visitors alike.