Looking Out 02

The Illuminator

The Illuminator is a group of activists that aim to raise awareness about a variety of issues through massive media light projections. The group was formed during the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011. The very first piece was by artist Mark Read, with a projection on the side of the Verizon building in NYC of ‘99%’.

These projections are certainly classified as mass media, since they are highly visible, able to reach a multitude of people. The installations are also highly variable, enabling them to be presented on any large surface. The nature of the projection allows it to be broadcast to the public, fitting within Colangelo’s framework. While the focus of the Illuminators reside in the political sphere, this type of artwork is not restricted to political messages.

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Jenny Holzer

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Members of The Illuminator create a projection of Edward Snowden for a Brooklyn Park. Photo courtesy of Emily Andersen/The Illuminator

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/projection-light-artists-protest

Bottoms Up – Pittsburgh Airport Project

Bottoms Up

By Johnny, Soojin, Sujay

Overview

Bottoms Up is an installation that showcases Pittsburgh’s beer locations. It retrieves a list of beer locations from a beer mapping API (https://beermapping.com/api/) and filters out the phone numbers. It randomly selects a phone number every 15 seconds, and plays a chime according to each digit of the number. The chimes are driven by solenoids, and an LED in the middle of the beer bottle lights up after every phone number finishes.

Motivations

By choosing a beer mapping API, we believe will provide a novel way for local micro-breweries in Pittsburgh to connect with visiting as well as native travelers passing across the airport terminal. This will also help generate an additional revenue model for the airport authority from the advertising fee paid by the breweries. The information value generated by the installation will targeted for 21+ demographic, however, young travelers are expected to be able to experience and enjoy the soothing sounds generated by the installation. Maintenance costs is likely to be incurred for the solenoids but the independently controllable design for the solenoids should permit ease of replacement.

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Phipps Project

Brandon, Johnny, Nitesh, SooJin

Lighting Themes

  1. Candlelight (flow of the light: edges of arc to center)

Input Options

  1. 12 distance sensors (spaced with each arc, placed in the holes of the brick walls)
    1. each sensor controls the arc-lights on the opposite side of the room
  2. IR Break Beams – how far can the lasers travel?
  3. PIR Motion sensor

Narrative

When a person walks in front of a distance sensor, the arc light immediately associated with it lights up (from the bottom of the arc one by one), while the arc lights adjacent also light up but with less luminosity. The colors will also follow the order of the lights, with the lights that light up first taking on white hues, then yellow, then red. This effect resembles flickering candlelight, enhancing the holiday ambiance. 

Since the sensors will be placed in the spaces inside the brick wall, they should be reasonably obscured and out of the guest’s vision. This should help it to remain untouched. Additionally, since the lighting moves forward, it encourages guests to also move forward through the exhibit.

We wanted to keep things simpler, since any sort of “obvious” or direct interaction would most certainly cause the foot-traffic to slow down, congesting the exhibit. This is something that we really want to avoid, as overcrowding and long wait times, no matter how pretty the lights/features, will ruin the experience. This is especially true if there are children, since they are typically less patient.

Looking Out 01

Light Festival in Tadasu no Mori

http://light-festival.team-lab.net/en/

This project was created by teamLab, a Japanese art collective. It is located in Shinto Shimogamo Shrine in Kyoto, Japan. It makes use of lights, sounds, and light-emitting balloons. The trees lining the path to the shrine will pulse and change color when approached. The balloons hover over the space, changing color and playing sounds when touched. This project is important because it combines traditional cultural elements and sacred space with new technologies to evoke new or enhanced feelings. The lights promote inter-connectivity with the environment, boosting the atmosphere of the Shinto shrine.

Floating Flower Garden

https://www.teamlab.art/w/ffgarden

This project was also created by teamLab. The dense garden opens up as visitors approach. As the visitors pass by, the masses of flowers and foliage close behind them. A hemispherical space of flowers is created, constantly enveloping the visitor wherever they walk. The flowers are also live, incorporating real scents and insect sounds. This is an important project because it involves live, organic materials to create a special space for visitors. While the visitor will walk to different areas of the garden, they will always be surrounded by walls of plants that yield to their desired pathways.