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^ Mimi Son’s ‘Lit Tree”
For this looking outwards, I am looking at the work of Mimi Son who is the creator of interactive artworks with novel displays. Mimi Son was born in Seoul where currently she lives and works. She completed her master degree on Digital Media Art and Design at Middlesex University and Interaction Design at CIID. She is currently the Adjunct Professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul
Being a student of architecture I am really interested in a lot of her work because she uses a lot of programs that we are taught in class to create something so beautiful and sculptural. She uses her blog Kimchi and Chips to present her work and to show the viewer a constant updates of her different experiments int he virtual world.
In this project, a small potted tree is augmented with video projection, creating volumetric light patterns using itʼs own leaves as voxels. This technique allows a tree to have a visceral conversation with human visitors, and to become a new type of aesthetic object. The tree that can display digital media’ is a provocation against a current asymptote of outdoor digital media that champions media facades, we instead suggest interventions in reaction to existing unscripted entities within the environment such as trees.
The projection triggers photosynthesis effects which affect tree growth, suggesting the possibility of 3D printing a tree, and of visitors feeding the tree through interaction with it.
What is made even more interesting is the fact that Son has made the structured light projection coding and technique available online for free.