A Dazzling Sculpture With A Pioneering Structure

There’s a massive neon jellyfish suspended over traffic in downtown Denver, spanning 70m across and undulating gently in the night air. It’s a striking sight but no cause for concern; the strange form is 1.26, an incredible aerial sculpture by Janet Echelman tethered to the roof of the Denver Art Museum.

Foregoing the steel structure she typically employs for such installations, Echelman used a cutting-edge support system of Spectra fibre, a material 15 times stronger than steel by weight. At night, coloured lights enhance the piece, while the darkness obscures the support cables altogether.

The title was inspired by NASA’s announcement that the Chilean Earthquake in February 2010 shook the Earth’s mass significantly enough to shorten the length of our day by 1.26 microseconds; the three-dimensional model of the resulting tsunami rumbling across the Pacific informed the piece’s shape. Hopefully nothing shakes this 1.26 out of place before its time to come down. [Triangulation Blog]