VIDEO: Artist Leo Villareal's LED light sculptures are too cool for Earth

^{Leo Villareal talks about his work}

Leo Villareal is an artist -- an artist whose art will send you down a 200-foot hallway and make you feel like you're travelling through hyperspace.

Sometimes referred to as a light sculptor, Villareal uses different kinds of electronic light and computer coding technology to compose space-like panoramas of moving, glowing awesomeness.  Many of Villareal's pieces are made out of complex configurations of LED lights, creating vistas that mimic the elegant, organic shapes and movements found in our universe.

"What's exciting for me is just the immersive quality of these pieces, and the way that they really can transport people," Villareal says in the video above. "They become these vehicles that take you somewhere."

Villareal stumbled upon his exceedingly cool artistic medium in 1997 at Burning Man, a huge yearly gathering of artists in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. In order to mark his group's campsite in the crowded, featureless desert, Villareal whipped up a light sculpture with 16 strobe lights and attached it to their RV. His disoriented companions were then able to use it as a landmark to steer themselves home, visible from two miles away.

Upon observing the random lighting patterns of his impromptu creation, Villareal decided to work more with technological materials, thus building his career as a light sculptor/ manufacturer of things that shouldn't be allowed to be as cool as they are.

Villareal has an upcoming exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Art. But if you're not going to be on the West Coast anytime soon, you can do the next best thing and watch online footage of his art in action. Check out the video to see more of Villareal's mind-blowing work, and to hear him talk about his process and the ideas that drive him.