A rendering of what the Vectorial Elevation light display will look like in Vancouver. (City of Vancouver)

A display of 20 powerful searchlights will brighten the night sky over the entrance to Vancouver's False Creek during the 2010 Winter Olympics and will move in patterns designed by people on their personal computers via the internet.

The City of Vancouver announced the publicly controlled light display Wednesday.

Called Vectorial Elevation, the array of 10,000-watt lights will move and create patterns from locations in Vanier Park and Sunset Beach that cover an area of 100,000 square metres and be visible within 15 kilometres of the city's downtown core, the release said.

The interactive display will start at dusk on Feb. 4 and run nightly until Feb. 28, in all weather conditions.

130,000 contributed designs expected

Visitors to www.vectorialvancouver.net can design how the lights will move, their angles and how they are clustered in timed sequences to create their own patterns for the world to see, the release said.

A personalized web page will be automatically created for each participant to document their design.

Organizers estimate 130,000 patterns will be created in the 24 days of the project, which will operate from dusk to dawn.

It is the first time Vectorial Elevation will be installed in Canada, and the first time it will be used over a body of water.

The Vectorial Elevation display in Vitoria, Spain, in 2002. (www.alzado.net)

The installation, created by Montreal-based artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, has previously been staged in Mexico, Spain, Ireland and France.

"When I saw English Bay, I knew it would be the perfect spot to create our largest canopy of light," Lozano-Hemmer said in a release.