Seeing the light on Hollywood Boulevard

WEIRDLY organic worm shapes, puffy and thin, glowing in syncopated rhythm. Veins of light shooting through an illuminated fabric of interwoven geometric modules.

Two Hollywood Boulevard storefronts have undergone a temporary makeover, thanks to “Superficial Superglow,” a project that encompasses two environmental light installations inspired by nature’s bioluminescence.

On display through today, “Eviscerated Glow Worm,” at the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions gallery; and “Fizzle,” next door at the American Center for Music Theater, are the culmination of the first part of a two-part, two-year design and technology project for UCLA graduate students developed by faculty member David Erdman of the university’s Department of Architecture and Urban Design.

Featuring concealed, white-light illumination programmed to shift and travel through molded plastic -- based on desired focal points and ideas of visitor movement -- the installations explore how the behavior, texture and rhythm of light can change architectural surfaces and the perception of depth within urban storefronts.

“Eviscerated Glow Worm” was created to stretch across LACE’s horizontal storefront. A “full frontal piece” shaped by more than 20 pillow-like modules, the installation “looks almost as if it’s been puffed up by the light,” Erdman says. Pressing against the glass, it shifts from “a kind of thinner tapeworm form into something that becomes more earth-wormy” and detaches from the walls with “claw-like” extrusions.

“Fizzle” was designed for the center’s narrower, deeper storefront. It consists of 50 to 75 thin, interconnected modules that convey hot spots of light. These then push through narrow passages, like veins in a hand, Erdman explains, and “fizzle” out toward the edges, obscuring the boundaries of the original space.

Installed on two facing walls, these modules “kind of talk to each other, and they talk more and more the closer you get.... Fizzle’ tries to draw you in,” he adds. “ ‘Eviscerated Glow Worm’ reaches out and tries to grab you.”