At the 2025 Autumn Lights Festival in Oakland, artists Wesley Warren and Jessica Warren introduced two interconnected light installations: Pyramid and Swarm(aka USOs).
The works later appeared again on November 8th, 2025 at the REAP Climate Center during West End Arts District’s DeepDIVE event, where they were incorporated into a broader exploration of ecology, oceanic mystery, and technological interconnectedness.
Together, these installations combine sculpture, illumination, and networked behavior to create immersive, intelligent environments of light.
The Works:
Swarm — also known as “USOs” (Unidentified Submerged Objects)
The installation Swarm consists of 20–40 suspended lanterns whose colors and patterns shift in relation to one another using Bluetooth communication. In some showings, the artists described the lanterns as “USOs — Unidentified Submerged Objects” to evoke the feeling of mysterious, living forms moving under the surface of an unseen environment.
The lanterns behave like bioluminescent creatures drifting in a dark ocean. Their synchronized pulses suggest intelligent, perhaps even organic communication. They become not just decorative lights, but an entire ecosystem of signals, suggesting unseen life below the threshold of human perception.
Whether conceptualized as a swarm of airborne signals or a submerged network of glowing USOs, the installation invites viewers to feel surrounded by a living, moving intelligence.
Below Photo: Building Swarm & Perfecting Pryamid 2025
Szonic Allure helping with tenticals, Jess making tenticals, Wes testing out consensus, Wiring the LEDs, Jess spray painiting the USO design, Wes adding protective shrink tubing to the pyramid.
Pyramid
In counterpoint to the distributed behavior of Swarm, Pyramid stands as a singular sculptural form—geometric, stable, and architectural. Where Swarm pulses, shifts, and reacts, Pyramid anchors the environment.
Dancer from @danceavision / Dancer featured below: @sutchatmosley
Lake Merritt 2025 Autumn Lights Festival in Oakland
Presentation at Autumn Lights Festival 2025
Set within the Gardens at Lake Merritt, the installations interacted with trees, pathways, and the reflective surfaces of the garden at night. Swarm’s lantern-USOs seemed to hover between branches like luminous organisms, while Pyramid formed a visually grounding focal point.
Visitors experienced the works as a kind of illuminated ecosystem—a constellation of lights behaving collectively, contrasted against the simplicity and certainty of the pyramid structure. Amid the natural setting, Swarm’s “USO” identity became especially evocative: the lanterns felt as if they were rising from or sinking into unseen depths among the foliage.
Re-Presentation at the REAP Climate Center (November 8, 2025)
At the DeepDIVE event—a multimedia journey into themes of climate, ocean depth, and environmental interconnection.
The REAP event emphasized the ocean as a site of mystery, depth, and fragile ecological balance. Here, Swarm’s USO identity directly linked to the oceanic theme:
The lanterns became submerged entities, drifting through conceptual “waters.”
Their communication patterns echoed sonar, bioluminescence, or deep-sea species signaling in blackness.
Visitors walked among them as though entering a light-based reef or the threshold of an unknown ocean trench.
Pyramid, meanwhile, acted as an anchor—almost like an artifact or a monument—against which these mysterious USO-lights could be read. In this context, the Pyramid became a symbol of human structure and interpretation, set against the fluidity and uncertainty of nature.
Visitors were also invited into discussion with the artists, highlighting the works not just as visual installations but as interactive thought-spaces about climate, communication, and interdependence.
Whether encountered as a shimmering swarm of lights or a school of mysterious USOs drifting through conceptual waters, Swarm—in dialogue with Pyramid—stands as a compelling example of contemporary light-based art that merges technology, ecology, and sensory immersion.
The shift from the Autumn Lights garden landscape to the climate-center oceanic framing reveals the installations’ versatility and depth, showing how light, environment, and narrative can transform each other.
Take a look from over the year;
Big thanks to those that helped with installation and during the buiding process including; Yolanda Cotton-Turner, Szonic Allure, Eric Murphy, Joe Hudson & Justin Iredale.
Thank you to those who work so hard to put on these events in the community and for including us! Tora Rocha, Jonathan DeLong, Ethan McHugh Merrill, Tara Pilbrow, Rachel Campos de Ivanov & many many more!
