Those Abstract Designs on Salesforce Tower Actually Tell the Story of the Bay

Winter solstice falls on North America this coming weekend, bringing about the longest night of the year. Amidst the darkness, from Dec. 20 through Dec. 22, the digital display atop San Francisco’s Salesforce Tower will be illuminated by images of colorful geometric shapes rhythmically moving in sequence, telling a significant story about this place we call home.

Each cone, orb, line and wave floating around the crown of the tallest building in the city will symbolize vital information from the Bay Area, ranging from the change of the tides to the number of people taking BART rides.

By using a year’s worth of data (summer ’23 to summer ’24) collected by researchers at NASA, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and a handful of other government-funded science programs, UC Berkeley professor Greg Niemeyer has combined and visualized information in an artistic manner to create the 20-minute reel, Synchronicity.

More than pretty lights atop a behemoth of a building, Niemeyer says that with the support of Jim Campbell and Emma Strebel of Salesforce Tower Top Art, the goal of this project is to make data more accessible. His thinking: If people are aware of things like the decline in air quality in the Bay Area, maybe they’ll do something about it.

“How can we make that more public?” Niemeyer asks rhetorically during a recent video chat.

With a head of silver hair and a matching short-trimmed beard, the 57-year-old data artist uses his hands as he talks, explaining how his work compares to role once served by religious institutions in small communities. “Church towers,” says Niemeyer, “used to ring bells when people got married or they passed away.” He adds, “They were full of information, and it was a public piece of information.” But now, Niemeyer says, too often data is privatized. “If you’re not an expert, it’s not so available, and I want to change that. I want to make sure it’s more available to everybody.”

Conversely, Salesforce, the multibillion dollar company that anchors the building where Niemeyer’s work is being displayed, is built on privatized data. And while the company isn’t as big as say, religion, it does have a hand in the majority of online transactions made. Acknowledging the conflict, Niemeyer says a friend told him that with this project he’s “subverting the tower.”

But Niemeyer hasn’t fully achieved his goals of artistic expression and accessibility. For example, he openly regrets not having an audio component to accompany the visualization. And while he’s pushing people to stop looking down into their cellphone-fixated silos for information, and to instead look up to see a more unifying set of data, viewers of the Salesforce Tower display won’t understand the meaning of each geometric shape unless they look at the key — which is on Niemeyer’s website. (And not everyone has access to the internet.)

A constant inventor of ways to express data about the environment by using art, Niemeyer says he’s always looking at lights and displays, thinking about how powerful they’d be if they communicated something more meaningful. Especially this time of year.

“What if we made it so that the position of each Christmas light means something?” he asks, adding that while Synchronicity is full of bright lights and eye-catching designs, it’s also more than that. “It’s an opportunity for me to share information. And that, I think, is very beautiful.”

Even in the mild Mediterranean climate of the Bay, the transition from fall to winter brings a palpable change, one that impacts all residents — albeit, in a different way for those who sleep on the street and those who work in the office suites. Still, Niemeyer believes the larger environmental factors connect us all. And it’s that notion of common threads that makes this data so important.

Ever optimistic, Niemeyer points out that winter solstice is also a message that longer days are soon coming.

“We have something to look forward to, and something to prepare for,” says Niemeyer of the seasonal shift. But he points out one caveat: “You don’t get through these dark days without a sense of purpose.”

Synchronicity runs every night in December, midnight–1 a.m.  From Dec. 20 through Dec. 22, the installation will run all night.