Looking Outwards 08: The Creative Practice of an Individual

Hyphen-Labs is an international community of women of color who are involved in the fields of design, art, and technology to produce works together. The interdisciplinary nature of the group allows them to focus on design processes through evolving discussions and the collective consciousness of social challenges in the community. 

Work title: Prismatic_NYC

Link: http://hyphen-labs.com/prismatic.html

The Prismatic project is a kinetic sculpture located above the high line in NYC. The sculpture is constructed with 66 individual prisms that have integrated LED lights to create interesting forms of light beams. The rotation and translation of the prisms ‘design’ the behavior of lightning through space. I am amazed by this project because the designers are able to handle each prism’s rotation/speed/form differently to create a cohesive artwork. This requires meticulous planning beforehand in determining the algorithm of each prism, the direction of their rotations, and the interaction between every prism altogether. The team reimagined a new system to create this unique experience: tapering each prism and alternating their orientation. This strategy lets them control the visual vertices of one pair of prisms. The final product is an animated undulating wave of light concurrently achieving lateral translations of the 2D curve, which flows volumetrically through the space.