Inside the Bay Lights Project (pictures)

SAN FRANCISCO--On March 5, artist Leo Villareal will formally launch The Bay Lights Project, the world's largest LED installation.

The Bay Lights Project features 25,000 one-inch LEDs hung on the cables of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in San Francisco.

The project will consist of a nearly infinite number of patterns that are randomly generated and which play for random periods of time.

A look at some of the LEDs as the hang off the western side of the Bay Bridge.

A near full moon fights through the nighttime fog over the Bay Bridge as the Bay Lights Project delights those who happened to see it being tested.

During testing, the artist and his technician sometimes had trouble getting the lights to work properly. When the bridge would go dark, all that remained on was one vertical line of LEDs on a tower -- and permanent lights on top of the bridge.

The Bay Lights Project is slated to run for a minimum of two years, starting March 5.

A look at the Bay Bridge will all 25,000 LEDs turned on.

The patterns that make up the artistry of the Bay Lights Project can move in any direction, and can get brighter, dimmer, can explode, or dissolve, and can have multiple layers.

A series of patterns move across the bridge.

A pattern of negative space moves across the bridge.

Artist Leo Villareal has collected a library of patterns, and when the project launches next month, it will be run from a computer mounted on the bridge that serves up patterns randomly and for random amounts of time.

The Bay Lights Project is designed to be visible for miles. However, it was also designed to be nearly invisible to drivers on the bridge.

Here, we see part of a pattern Villareal calls a "star field," blended with another pattern.

Seen here is evidence that the project can display different patterns on different parts of the bridge.

A look at a single tower and the way the LEDs on that tower can be randomly distributed at any given moment.