His work combines LED lights and encoded computer programming to create illuminated displays.

Villareal was born in 1967 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and raised in El Paso on both sides of the US/Mexico border.

[6] The decisive moment that started his career came in Nevada's Black Rock desert during the 1997 Burning Man festival, when Villareal rigged up a strobe-light array above his tent so that he could find it more easily.

[7] On March 5, 2013, Villareal debuted his largest piece to that date, The Bay Lights, a public light installation consisting of 25,000 LEDs strung on the vertical cables of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

His work has also been on display at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., Madison Square Park in New York City, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the PS 1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, New York, The Northpark Mall in Dallas, and Brooklyn Academy of Music.