In New York, nearly three thousand drones rose above Manhattan to tell, in the sky, a story the city has remembered for a quarter of a century. On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, a light installation made up of 2,977 drones appeared over Lower Manhattan – one for every person who died as a result of the attacks.
The project was called “2,977 Lights”. Each light in the sky represented an individual human life. At first, thousands of drones rose above the Hudson River, gradually forming complex geometric shapes. Then the individual points of light began moving closer together until, at one moment, they formed the recognisable silhouette of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.
The creators managed to recreate the outlines of the towers at full architectural scale. For several minutes, a glowing image of the two skyscrapers that disappeared from New York’s skyline 25 years ago appeared above Lower Manhattan. “The goal of the 2,977 Lights project is to honour the victims and remember the events of September 11. We are lighting exactly enough lights to acknowledge every individual life,” said Addison Mehr, the project’s creative director and executive producer.
The show took place on Wednesday evening as part of commemorative events marking the 25th anniversary of the tragedy. The airspace over the area was restricted for several hours to allow the installation to take place, and some flights by other aircraft were temporarily suspended. The display itself was staged over the Hudson River, allowing the drones to create the enormous structure without interfering with the city’s buildings and streets.
The number 2,977 was not chosen at random. That is the number of people who died as a result of the September 11 terrorist attacks, excluding the 19 terrorists who hijacked the aircraft. The victims included people of many nationalities, ages and professions – passengers and crew members, World Trade Center employees, emergency responders, firefighters, police officers and people who happened to be near the sites of the attacks.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists hijacked four passenger aircraft. Two of the planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York. A third struck the Pentagon in Washington, while the fourth crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew members attempted to stop the hijackers.
The attacks changed not only New York and the United States, but the world as a whole. Air travel rules, security procedures, intelligence operations and international politics were all transformed. But 25 years later, the central symbol of September 11 remains not politics or statistics, but the people who were lost that morning.
That is what makes the idea behind the project so simple and yet so powerful: 2,977 lights – 2,977 human lives. For a few minutes, they came together once again above the city. Then the lights disappeared, leaving behind only the outlines of the towers and the memory of the people who once stood inside them.
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