By pressing buttons to mix red, green, and blue LED lights, park visitors become active performers, shaping the visual landscape and connecting with the local neighborhood community through beautiful colour.
How Germaine Koh’s interactive ‘DIY Field’ in Winnipeg’s Central Park turns public lighting into a communal canvas of color and connection.
Art isn’t meant to be stared at from behind a velvet rope; sometimes, it’s meant to be pushed, prodded, and repainted by the hands of the neighborhood.
Deep in the heart of Winnipeg’s Central Park, a field of ordinary steel posts morphs into a glowing, living matrix after dark. This is DIY Field, a brilliant interactive public art installation designed by Canadian visual artist Germaine Koh.
At first glance, the 38 pedestrian-scale pillars look like standard park hardware or rogue athletic pylons. But approach them in the prairie dusk, and you’ll find three simple buttons waiting on each tube. Pressing them unlocks a playful alchemy of red, green, and blue LEDs, allowing anyone to mix custom hues right onto the frosted acrylic sleeves.
What makes this grid so magical isn’t just the tech—it’s the unscripted human choreography it triggers. In a city known for its biting winter nights, DIY Field serves as a glowing hearth that coaxes people out of their coats and into a shared game of visual tag. Total strangers find themselves collaborating, shifting a pillar from a brilliant cyan to a warm amber, completely changing the mood of the park.
It’s a fantastic example of organic placemaking, proving that when you give people the agency to manipulate their environment, a dark public square instantly becomes an open, inviting sanctuary for genuine human connection.
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