Lingfan Jiang – Looking Outwards 07

This week, I am particularly interested in this project called “skies painted with unnumbered sparks”. It was done by an interactive artist, Aaron Koblin collaborated with Janet Echelman in 2014. Made entirely of soft fibers, the sculpture can attach directly into existing city architecture.

Being an architecture student myself, I really like how the artist started to think about the space between the buildings and how art could be involved in it. I really like the contrast between the hard concrete buildings and the smooth, light installation. Most importantly, with computational information visualization and great lighting effects, it really became something its audiences are willing to interact with. It is also amazing how people could just use their phones to draw lines and that would project directly onto the installation.

I think the final form of this art piece is very successful. As I mentioned earlier, this project is done by an interactive artist,  Aaron Koblin and another artist, Janet Echelman, who mainly does amazing huge scale installation art. Therefore, I think the combination of the two artists really created something fascinating.  As for the algorithm behind it, I would assume that the installation becomes a bigger monitor of people’s phones. Whatever is drawn on the phones would project directly on to the installation.

Furthermore, I think this kind of techniques could really make some science fiction movie scenes come true where a lot of projecting figures are floating in the air in the future.