2025.10.11·Installation

Naga lands in Golden Gate Park A week in the desert, then years in a public park

The same sculpture, a different contract. A week in the desert asks you to survive. A public park asks you to be boring, reliably, for years.

After Black Rock City, Naga got a second life. He has a long-term home now: a pond in Golden Gate Park, head high over the water, lighting up every night at sunset. The build that got him there was less about making anything new and more about asking one question of every part of the system: will this still be working in ten years?

The desert asked us to survive a week. The park asks us to be boring, reliably, for years, outdoors, over water, in the ocean fog. Almost everything we changed, we changed for that reason.

Naga in daylight from the path, pale green scales and fins rising out of the pond with trees behind
Naga's head and neck at night, scales washed blue and violet from inside, one eye glowing, spike pixels bright along the fins
The same animal by day and by night. By day he is sculpture; at night he is a lamp.

Built for the long term and the weather

For the park we beefed up everything for long-term sustainability. Years of fog, rain and pond water, not a week of dust. That meant:

  • Factory weatherproofed LED fixtures, rated for submersion and pre-wired to our lengths. When one fails, it unplugs and a new one plugs in.
  • Flex conduit running the length of him, hump to hump.
  • Sealed NEMA boxes for the power supplies and controllers.
  • One power supply model everywhere, so there is one spare to keep on the shelf.
  • Custom parts where nothing off the shelf fit: spike caps, fin diffusers, and the frames that hold it all.
Five black NEMA enclosures laid out in a row on a wood floor, each wired with a Meanwell power supply, a controller and sealed cable glands
The five hub boxes: a power supply, a controller and a network switch in each, behind sealed glands
Powered up on the bench before going into the body

And the network: each section of his body talks to the shore over Ethernet, and between sections that cable goes through the pond. We never thought we would be running Ethernet underwater, but here we are.

The drained pond with a curving line of fresh concrete footings poured along its bed, NAGA 2025 scratched into the nearest one
The pond drained and the footings poured. NAGA 2025, scratched in while the concrete was wet.
A dense opening night crowd at dusk holding up phones toward Naga, his head and fins lit violet above them
Opening night. He has lit up every night since.

A week in the desert is a sprint. This is the long game: a piece that has to simply work, night after night, year after year. We are proud of the sprint. We might be prouder of the boring part.

home a pond in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
lights 763 LED fixtures across six sections
fixtures factory weatherproofed, pre-wired, plug to replace
power flex conduit throughout, sealed enclosures, one supply model everywhere
network Ethernet section to section, through the pond
control Chromatik on a Raspberry Pi, on a sunset schedule
remote cellular link for checking in from home