Installation of Leo Villareal’s 'BUCKYBALL' (2012) underway in Madison Square Park. (Courtesy Madison Square Park Conservancy)

Artist Leo Villareal is installing a new sculpture, called BUCKYBALL, at Madison Square Park, as part of the Mad. Sq. Art program. The piece, a light sculpture in the form of a Carbon 60 molecule, will be on display from Oct. 25 to Feb. 1, 2013.

More, from the press release:

A commission of the Mad. Sq. Art program, Villareal’s BUCKYBALL will feature two nested, geodesic sculptural spheres comprised of 180 LED tubes arranged in a series of pentagons and hexagons, known as a “Fullerene,” referring to the form’s discovery by Buckminster Fuller. Individual pixels located every 1.2 inches along the tubes are each capable of displaying 16 million distinct colors and will be specifically tuned by the artist’s own software, creating dynamic light sequences that will enliven the natural landscape of the park. Relying on LED technologies driven by chance, BUCKYBALL’s light sequences will create exuberant, random compositions of varied speed, color, opacity, and scale. BUCKYBALL will trigger neurological processes within the brain, calling on our natural impulse to identify patterns and gather meaning from our external environment.