Herald / Harbinger is a data-based permanent public artwork by Ben Rubin and Jer Thorp installed at Brookfield Place in Calgary, Alberta. The artwork draws from data fed into a specially constructed solar-powered seismic observatory near the Bow Glacier, monitoring its movements via satellite in real time. The ‘rumblings, cracks and shifts of the moving ice’ are visualized in the installation as sound and light.
The artwork is installed in the south lobby of the Brookfield Place tower and extends outside into the plaza. Data from the glacier 180km away is collected by solar-powered sensors, and transmitted to the sculpture in Calgary. The LED lights and sound controlled by the data are representative of the movement of the glacier’s melt water flowing down into the Bow River through the Bow lake and the city center into Hudson Bay. The piece also aggregates information sequences of inbound and outbound vehicular traffic at fourteen locations around Calgary which is arranged across seven LED fixtures.<ref name="Paquin"/>
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