NYC-based arts collective YesYesNo is shooting for a rather odd distinction in the art world: the longest work of art in the world. The crew is going to go high-tech, with the aim to light 450 weather balloons with colored LEDs and string them up along the 2,000 year old Hadrian’s Wall, built in Roman British times, that spans Great Britain.YesYesNo was commissioned by the organizers of a British summer arts festival going on to coincide with the Olympics. The piece, called “Connecting Light,” will span the 73-mile long wall. The balloons will apparently be networked so that various colors will transition down the line. Weather balloons are pretty big, and filled with LEDs, it should make for quite a sight.Zachary Lieberman, the member of YesYesNo overseeing final work on the project (and artist at F.A.T. lab), told the AP that YesYesNo “hoped to create ‘the inverse of a border … to imagine the border as a means of connection’ rather than separation.”Is it going to be the world’s longest piece of art? At 117 kilometers long, the project will dwarf Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s work Running Fence, which was about 40 kilometers long. (The Gates, which is arguably the duo’s most famous work, ran for around 37 kilometers in Central Park.)But does spacing balloons along an ancient wall really make it the longest? I mean, could some other guy space 500 balloons just a little bit farther to claim the record, or does such a record even matter? I suppose that’s why we’re talking about it.Follow Derek Mead on Twitter: @derektmead.
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