Milano Centrale Railway Station, Piazza Duca D'Aosta, Milan, Italy
Milan Central Station
Milano Centrale Railway Station, Piazza Duca D'Aosta, Milan, Italy
Milan, Italy
Santa Maria Novella, Piazza di Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Italy
Santa Maria Novella Station
Santa Maria Novella, Piazza di Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Italy
Florence, Italy,
3:30 PM in July. CROMOS: Solar Spectrum Environmental Art, Milan Central Station, Italy, 1999-2000. Each skylight roof prism is 24″ wide by 120″ long.
Seventy-four prism comprise the installation.
Milan Central Station, Milan, Italy. Location of Peter Erskine’s CROMOS solar light art installation.
9:30 AM in July. A 100 foot long swath of window-mounted prisms project ever-changing solar spectrum color. CROMOS solar light art installation in the Galleria of Rome’s Termini Railway Station. Materials: Sunlight, 134 laser cut prisms. Each prism is 24″ wide by 72″ long.
10 AM in July. CROMOS, solar art installation in Rome’s Termini Railway Station, December, 2000,
CROMOS: Rome Termini Railway Station, Italy
Moving spectrum sunlight on Rome Termini Station stairs and escalators. Materials: sunlight, laser cut prisms.
CROMOS, Rome Termini Railway Station, Italy, Ever changing Solar spectrum, 3 PM Dec. 22
Exterior of Rome Termini Railway Station showing “Dinosaur” and Galleria locations for CROMOS.
Solar powered art installations in three Italian Railway Stations
Deploying the planet's largest prisms, Peter Erskine's CROMOS installations refracted ordinary Sunlight into colossal solar spectrum beams – bathing three Italian railway stations and thirty EuroStar trains in the ethereal beauty of living solar rainbows. Powered by our life giving Sun, these glowing light and space environments gradually shifted in form and color - every hour, day, and week of the six month long installation.
Materials: Sunlight, Rome, Florence and Milan Railway Stations, 30 EuroStar trains, laser-cut flat prisms
Sustainable Travel – Sustainable Art
CROMOS was commissioned by the Italian State Railway, Ferrovia dello Stato, to celebrate the Millennium Year, and as an artistic intervention to lure travelers from high carbon air travel to low carbon rail travel. In CROMOS, Peter Erskine created Solar Spectrum Environmental Art installations in the Rome Termini station, Florence Santa Maria Novella station, Milan Central station and on 30 EuroStar high-speed trains running between Rome and Milan. The train sized solar spectrum beams glided through Termini station, lighting the stairs, walls and floor of the mail concourse with rainbows 80 feet wide and as long as 300 feet when the sun was low in the afternoon around Christmas time. See the photo with the red floor. Under Milan’s arched roof the modular prism stretched 6 feet wide and 140 feet long to flood spectrum beams across trains, passengers and platforms.
Worlds Largest Artwork?
Extending over 540 kilometers (325 miles) of ultra high-speed railway track, the geographic and architectural scope of the project probably makes it the largest artwork in the world. Over 5000 square feet of specially designed laser-cut prisms were used, including over 3.5 miles of prism in the 30 high-speed trains. However, the total project weight of all prism material used is less than 150 kilograms and virtually all the art materials will be recycled by the artist.
Ecologically, the Cromos project is an example of the “sustainability” principle of doing much more with much less.
