Crisscrossing over the fabric would be el-wire laid out to match a map of Pittsburgh; businesses like restaurants, stores, museums and other points of interest would be depicted as clusters of colored transparent discs. Live travel data represented as glow traveling along the wire would activate the installation and help to encourage travelers out into the city.

Back-lit by the sun during the day and incandescent lighting at night, the projections on the floor would encourage visitors and travelers to look up and take in all that this growing, culturally vibrant city has to offer.

When visitors enter the room, they have the opportunity to play with buttons on the edge of the flowerbed. Through experimentation the visitors will find that one button activates a set of golden “fireflies”, laid out to enhance the natural beauty of the plants, with soft organic light motion flowing around the bed. The other activates a similar effect, with crimson “fireflies” bringing life to the planter.  

Pressing the buttons together will trigger the lights in flowerbed send out a gradient of light projecting out into the direction of cove lights, and a ripple of white light will be sent across the room. it sends the two visitors experience out into the room, and shares the joy of their interaction with the other guests. This ripple reverberates across the room, alerting visitors to the presence of others and inspiring that feeling of warm fellowship

Our project encourages fluid movement through the room, the placement of the flowerbed interactions in either corner and motion of the ripple forward encourages visitors to move forward.

Motion triggered see-saws bring childlike life to the side walk in Montreal. The public is invited to activate the installation by mounting the see-saws; the intensity of light and pitch of the sound is varied by the high and speed at which the see-saws are ridden. When not in use they return to a mute, low light horizontal state and have two options for play: formal and informal.

Formal play is structural, it challenges the audience to re-create a performance, with previous knowledge of who the other players are. Informal play is organized chaos, seemingly uncoordinated movement creates beautifully coordinated music and light shows for the onlooker. This project is a innovative way to open up the lines of communication between strangers, not just through words, but through the silent language that is shared experience. Play testers make the conscious agreement to leave embarrassment, pretentiousness and fear at the door when they enter this space. They open themselves up to the influence of others and together create awesome, interactive light and sound pieces.

Conversation Domes

Jessica Frelinghuysen

Inside each dome is a voice or voices that are trying to talk to the other domes. Each dome embodies a person, and the viewer may simply listen or talk back. The sound inside the domes is added to by the noise around them, during peak times the user is surrounded by a cacophony sound.

Complete privacy is a thing of the past. Conversations are recorded actively and passively and are playback-able at anytime by any person. What sort of sounds, what snippets of information about other people can we gain from standing still for a moment.