The Empire State Building Goes Vegas With New Light Show

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Visitors to New York City this holiday season will get the first chance to see the new light show that is The Empire State Building.

Once home to stodgy monochrome lights that changed every week or so to reflect the time of the year (or a Giants Super Bowl win), the building has now upgraded to a new state-of-the-art dynamic LED lighting system courtesy of Philips Color Kinetics.

As the company humble brags, the new system “allows customized light capabilities from a palette of over 16 million colors in limitless combinations along with effects previously not possible such as ripples, cross-fades, sparkles, chasers, sweeps, strobes and bursts. In addition to greater control and management of the lighting, the new computerized system will deliver superior light and vibrancy levels in real-time, unlike the previous floodlights.”

The above video was taken the night of November 26, 2012, when the light show was synchronized to the Alicia Keys songs Girl is on Fire and Empire State of Mind (the music was playing on the radio which was simulcast on several radio stations in New York City at the same time).