Echelman's newest work continues her interest in making visible the existing
environmental forces which cannot be seen by the human eye, yet innovates with a new
material and subject matter. Functioning as a continuous X-ray of the city's circulatory
system, Echelman's artwork will trace above ground the pathways of the three subway
lines which run beneath Dilworth Plaza. The movement will occur in real time, using a
data feed of train arrival and departure. The pathways will be drawn in 5-ft-tall curtains
of atomized water illuminated by layers of colored light. This is Echelman's first artwork
using this new methodology.

On October 19, 2010, Center City District announced that its application for federal
funding to redesign and renovate Dilworth Plaza has been awarded a $15 million federal
Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant. These funds
were awarded on a competitive basis for innovative projects that improve transportation
facilities and systems and that promise significant economic and environmental benefits
to an entire metropolitan area, a region or the nation.

In the grant application, Center City describes the Echelman art component as follows:

"One of the most innovative aspects of this project is our engagement of
internationally recognized artist, Janet Echelman, to draw attention and
customers to the transit network that converges beneath Dilworth Plaza.
Echelman is known for reshaping urban space with fluid sculpture that
responds to environmental forces. Working throughout the world, her
work was featured at the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games and last
year she completed a new civic icon for Phoenix that has been hailed for
contributing to the revitalization of that city's downtown.

Echelman's unique work will reflect the historic importance of the site's
association with water and its relevance as a transportation engineering
marvel... Echelman's work will make transit visible and memorable
again. She will install beneath the surface of the plaza and fountain
thin tubes that emit columns of mist tracing the course of the three
major transit lines that run beneath the surface. By night, these will be
illuminated with the same colors chosen by SEPTA to code their transit
lines. As the trains move east, west, north and south beneath the site,
columns of illuminated mist will criss-cross the plaza, forming a real-time
and immersive three-dimensional graph of the movement of transit below.
In cold weather months, lighting alone will trace the course of transit
service below."

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Dilworth Plaza, Philadelphia City Hall

Philadelphia, PA, USA

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