Posts filed under 'Lighting'
Made up of 700 meters of aluminium, 6750 LED’s and 5060 m of cables Lab[au]’s Framework f5×5x5 is an interactive kinetic light sculpture, extending the bi-dimensional screen space, by transposition of its pixel resolution to the physical space. Conceived as a modular infrastructure, f5×5x5 is a communication and computation system, propagating in form of light and sound the events it inhabits. Presence and motion create and alter the transmitted data, and propagation of this data becomes a space-time parameter.
The term framework refers to informatics’ modular workspace, called a framework. Here, f5×5x5’s ‘frames’ constitute the framework, a space built up by five modules of 2×2m, divided in 5×5 squared elements, establishing a matrix of 5×5x5 = 125 modules. On one side diffusing the light (white), on the other absorbing the light (black), the modules constitute a binary language (0,1) and a space of 125 pixels, allowing to transcribe captured data from the physical environment in a kinetic and luminous play _ in between opening and closing, in between transparency and reflection, in between light and dark.
October 12th, 2009
A project that caught my eye a while ago is ‘Living Light’ by The Living, architects in New York. It is a permanent public pavilion in Seoul that visualises air quality data from the city. Although according to their website it hasn’t been completed yet, images are starting to appear.
The lines represent neighborhoods so, broadly speaking, you can spot which areas of the city currently have pollution issues. You are also able to communicate with the structure via text message to receive more in depth information about the air quality. More lights illuminate when it communicates in this way, as a visual gauge of public interest.
As Ruairi noted early last year, The Living always have a few research projects on the go, what they call ‘flash research’. With a budget of less than $1k, a project duration of less than three months, and the idea of finishing up with a full scale prototype, its a simple recipe for producing interesting projects.
As a newbie to the world of architecture I find it amazing that a short timeframe and a small budget can allow such developments in that realm. We often find it hard enough in digital media to accomplish these things to any major degree of success without needing to consider architecture’s expensive and challenging areas like construction materials.
The following images are of River Glow, another R&D project of theirs. They will be exhibiting a similar project in New York starting September 2009.
“Two networks of floating interactive tubes will house a range of sensors below water that will monitor the presence of fish, water quality, and hydrodynamic forces. This data will then be displayed above water using an array of LED lights, along with wireless sensor communication and a text-messaging interface so that citizens can communicate with it from the shoreline.” See Situated Technologies: Toward the Sentient City.
Article on The Living. Images from The Living.
July 13th, 2009
Declan Shaw’s of Interactive Installation, Bird Soundscapes incorporate a dynamic three dimensional acoustic environment of birdsong which perform accelerated diurnal cycles. Individual ‘birds’ occupy positions in space, which move about in birdlike patterns and also reacting to the movement of the inhabitants. This is accompanied by a coloured light cycle which denotes the times of day.
In this manner the listener may hear an accumulating dawn chorus of bird personalities while her environment is filled with an intensifying morning blue light. She may go on the hear crows and blackbirds interacting in a red evening dusk. Shaws work was developed within the Bartlett School of Architectures Anechoic Chamber hence the menacing image of the spikey walls but the intention is that the constructed environment would be placed within an existing negative waiting space, such as a hospital ward or waiting room, with a view to encouraging positive waiting behaviour in its occupants.
As well as the installation Declan produced a series of college images depicting this changing acoustic environments intended effects in the hospital patients experience of these spaces.
Declan describes how “the context of this project is the construction of a space for waiting and for exploiting the possibilities of waiting. While drawing distinctions between waiting situations as pleasure/play and waiting as punishment/pain, I fixed on the notion of reverie as a crucial condition for the encouragement of the positive possibilities of waiting, which include: rest, renewal, inspired creativity and a sense of satisfaction and wellbeing.” Declans doesn’t have a website but his work and work of many other students from Unit 14 at the Bartlett can be found here
July 3rd, 2009
Installation artist Shih Chieh Huang transforms spaces with everyday objects. His most recent project “EX-I-09″ currently on show at the Beall Center for Art + Technology focuses on exploring the unusual evolutionary adaptations undertaken by creatures that reside in inhospitable conditions.
Huang creates analogous ecosystems made from common, everyday objects. “I source my wholly synthetic materials from the mundane objects that comprise our modern existence: household appliances, zip ties, water tubes, lights, computer parts, motorized toys and the like. The objects are dissected and disassembled as needed and reconstructed into experimental primitive organisms that reside on the fringes of evolutionary transformation: computer cooling fans are repurposed for locomotion; Tupperware serves as a skeletal framework; guitar tuner rewired to detect sound; and automatic night lights become a sensory input. ”
The exhibition is on till June 6th 2009
April 13th, 2009
Above is an image of 1301 fluorescent tubes powered only by the electric fields generated by overhead powerlines. It was created by Richard Box while artist-in-residence at Bristol University’s physics department.
He got the idea for the installation after a chance conversation with a friend. ‘He was telling me he used to play with a fluorescent tube under the pylons by his house,’ says Box. ‘He said it lit up like a light sabre.’ Box decided to see if he could fill a field with tubes lit by powerlines. After a few weeks hunting for a site, he found a field, slipped the local farmer £200 and planted 3,600 square metres with tubes collected from hospitals.
A fluorescent tube glows when an electrical voltage is set up across it. The electric field set up inside the tube excites atoms of mercury gas, making them emit ultraviolet light. This invisible light strikes the phosphor coating on the glass tube, making it glow. Because powerlines are typically 400,000 volts, and Earth is at an electrical potential voltage of zero volts, pylons create electric fields between the cables they carry and the ground.Box denies that he aimed to draw attention to the potential dangers of powerlines, ‘For me, it was just the amazement of taking something that’s invisible and making it visible,’
April 9th, 2009
‘E-Static Shadows‘ is a practise-based experimental research project by designer Dr. Zane Berzina and architect Jackson Tan which creatively explores the speculative and poetic potential of static electricity found in our everyday environments, surrounding our everyday interactions. The aim of the project is to investigate how electrostatic energy could either be effectively utilised or play a part in the development of active, responsive and interactive textile systems which would be capable of detecting, translating and displaying this energy into dynamic audio-visual patterns. This design pilot project studies the possible translations of electrostatic energy into other types of energy such as light, sound and motion using specially engineered intelligent textile systems as mediators and displays for these processes.
The electronic textile acts as a static mirror responding to the usually invisible charges generated by people interacting with materials and making them visible. Equipped with tiny LED lights, transistors and woven electronic circuits seamlessly integrated into the electronic textiles structure, the installation is able to create transient shadows on the textile display in areas which detect a presence of electrostatic fields, feeding on the charges created by viewers and objects. Simultaneously it acts as a simple sonic instrument in response to the presence and intensity of charges and human proximity.
Static electricity is one of the oldest known physical phenomena. The ancient Greeks noticed the amazing ability of amber, once rubbed, to attract light materials despite gravitational forces. Because of its electrostatic properties amber in Greek means ‘electron’.
For a long time electrostatic continued to be a source of mystery and amazement, before the rational and scientific approach to understanding the world came about. In the early 17th century fascinating devices and machines that tread between the boundaries of magic and science, conceptually and perceptually, were evolved through the unravelling of static electricity, including the first electrostatic generator by Otto van Guericke. In 1901 various scientific experiments culminated into Dr. Nikola Tesla’s plan to wirelessly broadcast electrostatic power to the whole world from his facility at Wardenclyffe in New York.
Teslas Wardenclyffe Facility
Public electrostatic demonstrations and performances easily became one of the crowds’ favourite entertainments in the 17th to 19th century due to its seemingly miraculous, contradicting experiences. Just one example is Stephen Gray’s experiment premiered in London in 1730.
The famous “flying boy” used to demonstrate electrical polarity in suspended objects.
He suspended an eight year old boy in mid air, utilising the human body as a medium for static electricity, attracting paper and light objects to the boy’s negatively charged face and hands. This type of showmanship converged both artistic and scientific fields of endeavour creating discourse about the employment of human architecture as a medium for interactions with the environment within the context of electrostatics.
March 10th, 2009
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