Nearly 10 feet tall ‘Talking Heads’ to light up downtown Raleigh in new Art Walk
Downtown Raleigh’s annual light art walk is back.
More than a dozen light exhibits and installations will be on display from Dec. 1 through Jan. 5 on Fayetteville Street and Glenwood Avenue as part of downtown’s Illuminate Art Walk.
“We want (people) to have fun with it, and interact with pieces, take their photos with them,” said Bill King, CEO and president of the Downtown Raleigh Alliance. “We want them to experience a bit of whimsy and sort of lightheartedness. And then we obviously want them to experience downtown.”
The international headliner for this year’s art walk is the Limelight Talking Heads installation, two large heads, each containing 4,000 individually controlled LEDs. The light installation, created by Limelight Co-Founder Viktor Vicsek, has traveled across the United States and internationally including in Hong Kong, Toronto, Amsterdam, Montreal and Norrköping.
Each head is nearly 10 feet tall and wide, and weighs 600 to 900 pounds. The two heads will straddle Fayetteville Street in City Plaza.
“These two spectacular heads also show countless emotions and react to each other,” according to a Downtown Raleigh Alliance news release. “Unlike people, these Talking Heads don’t do it by means of muscles, but through all the possibilities of light.”
The pair are connected by Wi-Fi and react to each other but can also interact with visitors and “conduct conversations by means of light.”
The art installations also include Raleigh and North Carolina light artists and feature staples of downtown Raleigh’s public art scene including Nate Sheaffer’s Disco Alley on Glenwood Avenue and Thomas Sayre’s Shimmer Wall on the Raleigh Convention Center.
A full map of all 18 exhibits can be found online at downtownraleigh.org/illuminate.
Light Art Walk began during COVID-19 pandemic
The art walk began in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic when indoor events were scarce and downtown Raleigh needed a shot in the arm to get people back on the streets.
“There’s some symbolism in the light in darkness aspect of illuminate, but also there was just a functional (aspect),” King said. “We needed to get people comfortable walking around downtown after dark, and that is a part of what the event does. It gets people down here with enough volume that you feel comfortable.”
Downtown Raleigh averaged 25,000 visitors a night last December, King said.
“The idea of downtown and the holidays is pretty real, but we worked hard and I think have been successful in building an experience for downtown during the holidays with the ice rink, the performing arts center, the (Christmas) tree and Illuminate that this end of downtown does actually have a lot of energy to it, when it doesn’t necessarily always otherwise.”
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