I know a two-year-old who recently took advantage of her grandfather's nap to colour his pants and the couch he was sleeping on in crayon rainbows. He was supposed to be watching her; instead she coloured him in.
The installation last spring of 1330 shoebox-sized LEDs (light-emitting diodes) on the CN Tower gives every Torontonian the right to indulge in that two-year-old's transgressive impulse. The tower is a panopticon, a widely visible state building that symbolically gives citizens the impression of being watched, but they stare right back and can now colour it in 16.7 million non-permanent colours.
The energy-efficient LEDs by Color Kinetics Inc. first ignited June 2007 after years of planning and a three-month installation, making the 553-meter CN Tower the world's tallest LED display. Just before it lost the title of tallest building to Burj Dubai, the tower became the world's most widely visible programmable sign, as well as Toronto's most visible piece of public art. Although more freewheeling light shows ran through the summer, the tower currently displays only a red glow with brief white-to-red exchanges to highlight Canadian national identity, with more colourful shows at the top of the hour. Light-show design software controls the diodes through an ethernet connection to a main control box that sits somewhere in the tower like a missing prop from a '60s sci-fi flick. The design program can generate and archive thousands of diverse effects for the entire map of 1,330 lights with limited creative input needed from designers. One feature sends sparkles up the tower, while allowing the designer to control the speed, colour, length of cycle, fade time, and density of sparkle. Color Kinetics has made the software's instruction manual available to download for free, and, though a two-year-old might find the program confusing, its lighting-design elements could be learned in ten minutes by anyone else. Given the chance, anyone could colour the biggest, most visible beacon in the world. So, why aren't we? And who is?
After persistent inquiries, I learned from tower publicist Irene Knight that I couldn't speak to an official lighting designer because "a number of people are involved in making the design decisions," which are always intended to be "elegant and tasteful," and "not overly ostentatious." While the CN tower did display colours (not designs) submitted by communities in December, and is apparently considering possibilities for further citizen involvement in the lighting, rumours abound of potential light-show designers being discouraged. Web consultant Patrick Dinnen contacted the tower to inquire about interactive lighting options, in the same vein as Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's wildly popular Pulse Front, which broadcast the heartbeats of passers-by in giant lights at Harbourfront last summer. Tower administrators told him that the designs were all preprogrammed and that he couldn't have more information for "proprietary reasons." Glenn McArthur assigned his first-year students at the Ontario College of Art and Design the task of creating a CN Tower light show with colours from December cultural festivals celebrated in Toronto, including Hanukkah, Bodhi Day, Posadas, Eid-Al-Adha, Christmas, and Kwanzaa. Although he contacted the tower in October to discuss programming the students' designs, when tower staff finally replied to him in November they said that it was too late in the year to consider the possibility.
The LED system should be a full-time canvas for city-dwellers, but for now it usually perpetuates the state-emblem character of the tower by dully reconfirming from hour to hour that Canada's national colour is red. The onus is on Toronto's space invaders to suggest, request, or demand the chance to colour the tower themselves, and perhaps, if invitations to do so are not forthcoming, take matters into their own hands with DIY alternatives. One Spacing editor suggests riding up the elevator with flashlights, while new media artist-about-town Gabe Sawhney of [murmur] is planning miniature models of the tower with programmable lights. The possibilities are endless, with or without the participation of the official programmers.
Perhaps it is hubris to ask to colour our panopticon — perhaps the web-2.0 assumption that users deserve to generate their own arts and entertainment has reached a boundary at the CN Tower. Or maybe Toronto just needs to be patient as city institutions catch up to the new order. Whether or not Torontonians are allowed to colour the tower themselves, however, they'll keep painting it with meanings of their own. While walking north on Spadina on a foggy evening recently I passed three people walking south arm in arm, laughing as they compared visions of the lit-up tower behind me. "No!" shouted one, "It looks like a Martian deathliner!" I turned back. In the mist, only the disk of the tower was visible, and it did seem to hover with a weird alien energy as its new LED lights blinked and gazed at the city staring back.