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If you’ve walked Fulton Street lately and felt like the block was quietly glowing back at you, you’re not imagining it. The shuttered Macy’s in downtown Brooklyn has been rebade as a living light installation that pulses, flickers and shifts in time with the everyday sounds of the street outside.
The project, called In Every Transition, A Pattern, takes over the block-long windows of the former department store, transforming a retail void into something closer to a public artwork. It runs through March 16 and is best experienced after dark, when the glass comes alive with kaleidoscopic patterns.
Designed by Boston-based sound and installation artist Ryan Edwards and his team at MASARY Studios, the installation doesn’t just sit there looking pretty. Every shift in color and geometry is triggered by audio recorded on Fulton Street itself, whether it be traffic rumbling past, snippets of conversation, subway noise, pigeons, crosswalk signals or devotional music drifting in from Brooklyn Tabernacle down the street. There are no speakers, so you never hear the soundtrack. You just see it translated into light.
Edwards, who trained as a drummer, noticed something especially poetic in the mechanics of the block. The walk/don’t-walk signals, he realized, pulse at 60 beats per minute. “It’s the metronome of the street,” he told the New York Times—and that steady rhythm helps drive the visual patterns playing out behind the glass.
The project was commissioned by the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, with funding from the city’s New York City Department of Small Business Services through its Public Realm Grant program. The goal is to keep streets feeling active, attended to and welcoming during the cold months, especially when a major anchor like Macy's goes dark.
The Fulton Street location, once Abraham & Straus and later a Macy’s, closed in early 2025 as part of a nationwide pullback from underperforming stores. For many New Yorkers, a vacant big-box storefront signals decline, but that transition doesn’t have to mean dead space. Instead, the former Macy’s now acts like a giant, glowing barometer for street life. It’s not a replacement for retail, but it is a reminder that even in-between moments can hum with energy.