Mattress Factory's 'Acupuncture' to pierce North Side skyline

If German artist Hans Peter Kuhn has his way, soon Pittsburgh's skyline will be pierced with hot, white needles of light, high atop the Mattress Factory museum on the city's North Side.

The installation, "Acupuncture," will be a permanent one for the museum founded in 1977, which focuses on installation art.

Though "Acupuncture" won't have a sound element, it will include half a dozen "needles" or lines of light, each 65 to 100 feet in length.

Utilizing custom LED technology engineered by Pittsburgh-based Bunting Graphics, each needle will be made up of several 8-foot sections that will appear as one long needle of light.

"Since the piece will be visible from all sides, and the LEDs unfortunately only emit light in one direction, the engineers at Bunting had to invent a system to light up the back side of the LED, as well, without raising the costs of construction or the electrical-power usage," Kuhn says. "For this, they came up with a very efficient acrylic glass tube that diffuses the light in all directions plus gives the LED rods additional weather protection."

In anticipation of installation, slated for sometime in mid-2012 (after the funds are raised), a new roof will be installed on the building and steel supports will be erected onto which the "lightsticks" will be attached.

"It is serious hardware that we are dealing with here, and it will take some time and craftsmanship to install," Kuhn says.

"The big advantage of the LED technology is that the power consumption is extraordinary small," Kuhn adds. "Although this will be quite a big piece -- approximately 500 feet of bright light lines -- the power consumption will be less then 1.5 kilowatts per hour. This does not only end up in reasonable costs but also with a small carbon footprint."

So far, the design and engineering phase of this project has been completed, and just over $150,000 has been raised to cover the costs of that design and the necessary city permit. Luderowski says that $40,000 of that was spent on engineering, figuring for height, weight and wind resistance.

"We now need and are searching for the $500,000 it will take to put it together, erect it and put it on the roof," Luderowski says.

She hopes the piece will become a visible and significant marker for the North Side, and the city of Pittsburgh. "It's not a sign, or the typical kind of thing you'd find on roofs here," she says.

To kick-start the effort, an anonymous donor has offered $25,000 in the form of a "challenge grant," offering to match funds after that amount has been met.

"The lighting is a custom job. You couldn't just go and buy the lighting. It had to be engineered," Olijnyk says.

"Physically, the opportunity is so spectacular, because our building is this pedestal in the middle of this Victorian neighborhood," Olijnyk says. "It is six stories tall, and everything is below it. So it really is the perfect opportunity to have this happen here."