Seattle's New Streetlights Are 40-Foot-Tall Singing Flowers

When a city needs a psychedelic landscaping job and the guy who sold Jack the giant beans isn't available, Dan Corson's the person to call. The Seattle-based artist has a portfolio stuffed with alien-looking botany projects, from a lawn of green lasers in Florida to streetlights in Portland shaped like carnivorous plants and now, under the Space Needle, 40-foot-tall flowers acting both as lamps and troubadours that croon when people get near.

The Pacific Science Center commissioned this trippy artwork for its novel design and use of solar electricity – the petals of each "flower" are studded with photovoltaic cells that allow them to shimmer in vibrant hues. (How the science center had time to erect this installation while under attack from giant spiders is a mystery.) Corson initially wanted to call the piece "Humming Heliotrope" but settled with "Sonic Bloom." Those names are references to the sculptures' auditory component: The flowers can tell when people are nearby, and respond with a glorious, churchlike chorus of ooooohhs! and aaaahhs!