Diagram showing placement
of bubble machine in
relation to the streetlight.

As part of the X Marks the Spot public art project sponsored by the University of Memphis Art Museum and Number: Magazine, Bubble Light was installed in a downtown Memphis intersection for a month in 1997.

For one hour at dusk every evening, a bubble machine, mounted in the third-story window, filled the air with a cloud of bubbles. A street light located directly directly below the bubble machine illuminated the bubbles as they floated near the light, creating a large, faint, shimmering sphere above the street. Instead of using light to illuminate an object, here the bubbles were used to make the shape and scale of he street light's glow visible.

X Marks the Spot incorporated ten temporary public art projects, with the intent of putting art in places where people would not ordinarily encounter art. by inserting a foreign element (the bubbles) into the environment, so that they interact with the light, the artwork is formed at the intersection of the permanent and the ephemeral.