Looking Out 01 – Leah Jiang

FORESTA LUMINA

A walking trail through a forest of light and sound that became a tourist destination.

Wanting to showcase its charms, Parc de la Gorge de Coaticook commissioned Moment Factory to create Foresta Lumina, an illuminated night walk through the forest.

After nightfall in summer, visitors are invited to discover an enchanted trail winding 2 km through the woods. As they walk through the mysterious forest, visitors meet characters inspired by the area’s myths and legends, who draw them into an immersive adventure.

The scenography, combining projections and lighting, is accompanied by an ethereal soundtrack. The result is an unparalleled sensory experience. The Moment Factory team custom-made the entire experience, including perforated metal panels resembling ancient manuscripts, lighting units designed to look like fairies, video mapping on natural elements and more. The multimedia installations are seamlessly integrated into the surroundings, creating an all-encompassing sense of magic.

Following 2014’s success, counting over 70 000 visitors – nearly ten times more than the initially estimated foot traffic – Foresta Lumina has once again surpassed its set objectives with more than 145 000 visitors for its second consecutive year. This installation has allowed for a 1800% traffic increase in the region of Coaticook.

website

LIGHTGRENZE (Border of Lights)

Light art installation for 25 years fall of the Berlin Wall

This installation was built to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall, as creative directors, Christopher Bauder and his brother Marc were commissioned by the city of Berlin to create an extraordinary light installation.

From Nov 7th to 9th 2014, the 15.3-kilometre frontier that once divided the city center was reimagined in light by 8000 balloon lights all developed and produced by WHITEvoid.

website

Looking Out 01 – nsridhar

Curiosity Cloud – mischer’traxler Studio
(Dezeen Article)

This installation is an interactive design piece that uses lighting and sound in combination with infrared sensors to create an interactive soundscape that is activated by the audience. The piece consists of 264 blown-glass bulbs that are suspended from the ceiling at different heights and have a ring of LEDs to give the illusion of light bulbs. The glass bulbs contain hand-fabricated “insects” that start flying around when people approach the bulbs. Additionally the bulbs light up and the movement of the insects within the bulbs creates a unique soundscape that changes based on which bulbs are active and how the insects are moving.

The installation stands out as a piece that uses lighting as a backdrop to create a more rich human experience. As the bulbs light up, viewers are drawn to the insects, which are in turn moving in response to the audience approaching them. This develops an interesting call and response pattern which allows people to engage with the piece in multiple ways. Additionally the changes in height make it more accessible for children as well as taller adults by holding some bulbs at their eye-levels. There is a passive experience gained by watching the installation light up and produce a soundscape as throngs of people travel through it, but also a more direct experience that comes from people approaching different insects that appeal to them and seeing that they are the ones bringing the installation to life.

Light Pollination – Universal Assembly Unit
(Dezeen Article)

This installation uses LED lighting and fiber optics along with hidden photosensors that take in outside light and create light trails that ripple throughout the LEDs in the installation. There are around 20,000 individual points of LED lights that are articulated and controlled by custom built software that takes input from the sensors and “pollinates” it across the installation by causing the LEDs to light up in bursts. The movement and intensity of these ripples and bursts is determined by the intensity of the light being shone onto the sensors.

This piece functions slightly differently as a passive piece than it does as an interactive one. If someone without a light approaches it they can still have casual interactions with the piece by watching the light pulsate and running their hands through the fiber optics. In addition they can cast shadows over the installation and manipulate it to some minimal effect by reducing the light some of the sensors receive. However, the active viewer is able to create multiple different reactions using their phone or some other light source by moving further or closer to the installation or by changing the brightness of their device in addition to these passive interactions. The installation mimics human interactions with nature, revealing certain interactions that we know well but hiding certain mechanisms, such as in the opaqueness of the programming and the hiding of the sensors. Just as the average person knows that moths are attracted to light and that a firefly can light up without necessarily knowing the science behind it, this installation creates a spectacle and invokes a sense of wonder by hiding just enough of how it works from the viewer.

Looking Out 01

Anechoic Chamber, South Bank University, London

As the name suggest, the chamber is designed to be echo-free or non reflective for sound waves. Traditionally, developed to conduct a wide variety of sound related experiments, this chamber provides an experience where all the sound energy transmitted from the source travels away from the source and non is reflected back to it. The anechoic chamber in South Bank University provides a surreal experience, where all previously unperceived notions of sound become apparent. Such as sound of blood flowing through the body, thumping of heartbeats and by spending few minutes in the chamber, one becomes hyper-aware of their body and its existence with relation to the space around.

Link to project page: http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/case-studies/acoustics-anechoic-reverberation-chamber

https://youtu.be/MyP7i1B_QNk

Anechoic Chamber, South Bank University, London

Backside Of The Moon, Naoshima

Back of The Moon is one of many other architectural treasures on Japans’s “Art Island”. Its is a timber clad structure with a pitch black interior which renders you blind till the time your eyes slowly start adjusting to the practically no light environment. Eventually, as your eyes begins to adjust, you begin to get a sense of environment around you and the painstakingly detailed eerie grey light installations become visible. This structure represents the essence of how light and darkness can be harnessed to create truly powerful experiences.

Link to project page: http://jamesturrell.com/work/backsideofthemoon/

Looking Out 01

Liquid Shards – Patrick Shearn (Poetic Kinetics)
This piece uses mylar and monofilament to float above LA, creating a sliver water/wave-like mass. The form changes, shifts, ungulates based on the wind. As it dances above the pedestrians walking beneath, the shadow and form it creates on the surface below is just as whimsical.

Shearn’s work is particularly striking, because is is rather simple in it’s form and technology. It’s just a few materials and wind that bring this piece to life and encourage passive interaction, meant to be enjoyed from the offices above as well as the people below. In a Colossal article on the piece, they highlight Shearn’s intentions well, “it is when things are zoomed in or slowed down that we begin to understand the workings of the plants and animals around us, and sense the movements that are imperceptible with our limited vision.”

Silver wave installation above LA — Liquid Shard – Patrick Shearn

Interactive Queue Lines – Disney
I am writing this post from Disney (which certainly influenced my choice in this second selection) and for years I have been following the way they use technology in their queue lines. They have found a need to incorporate more and more interactive spaces as thousands of quests, wait thousands of hours in lines. As they renovate old rides/shows or build new ones, there is one constant, they bring an interactive element to the queue lines. Each one is themed and very specific to their particular setting, they are meant to entertain and bring a sense of magic or wonder to all that interact with them.

These queue lines incorporate not only a assortment of different technologies, from screens to built physical forms, but many require physical interaction—both actively and passively. Some queues invite the guest to play games, while others might reveal a surprise. Some are close and able to be touched directly, while others are further away and react to the whole body. All of this innovation to help pass the time, it makes me wonder what other applications spaces and experiences like this can have.

XYZT: Abstract Landscapes — Artechouse (https://artechouse.com/)
I stumbled upon this project recently and decided to add it into this Looking Out. The ways they use space and time to manipulate the landscape and promote interactions is mesmerizing.

The exhibit “exploit[s] ancient techniques of illusion and endless possibilities of modern technology.” I think one of the interesting things with the more abstract forms is that they allow for both passive and active interactions.

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.

Looking Outwards 01

IMPULSE
Luminotherapie
Place des Arts, Montreal, QC /// 2016

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.

Victoria Yong: Looking Out 01

BIG ♥ NYC

This Valentine’s Day installation in Times Square was designed by the famous international architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) in collaboration with smaller local firms in New York City. It is made of several transparent LED-lit acrylic tubes in a cubical pattern that surround a suspended sculpture of a giant red heart. To make the heart pulse with light, users place their hands on a touch pad that can sense their heartbeat near the installation. Joining hands with other people while touching the sensor speeds up the pulsing light pattern and intensifies the brightness.

This installation is a simple but clever idea that not only encourages interaction, but collaboration among its users. Its performance varies depending on how many people touch the heartbeat sensor, which would prompt users to try interacting or holding hands to see the different outcomes of this giant box of light. This piece can be engaged with in many different social settings instead of being a solitary experience for one user at a time. Additionally, the giant heart encompasses the spirit of Times Square and Valentine’s Day when it’s literally powered by the energy of the people who experience it.

Mesa Musical Shadows

This installation is a series of light sensors in a colorful geometric pattern on the ground that play different musical tracks when triggered by a shadow. The music played depends on the time of day and the darkness of the shadow cast on the sensor. One can also step on the sensors to play sounds. Each set of songs creates a specific atmosphere for the four different times of day. It was created by Daily tous les jours studio from Montreal and made for the Mesa Arts Center in Arizona.

The intelligent output of this project is incredibly rich and detailed. The sensors select from a wide range of songs programmed with MaxMSP for each quarter of the day and constantly recalibrate themselves to determine the specific values of shadows as the natural light changes over time. The hardware is also impressive, as the speakers had to be carefully installed underground and each of the 47 PCBs for the sensors was custom made. The project faced many practical challenges such as preventing water from entering the speakers and having easily removable hardware for city inspections. This installation is worth discussing because of how much complexity and consideration goes into creating something so simple and whimsical.

Exploded and constructed axons of light sensor.

Project 0: Mini Design Exercise

Client: Google
Location: Bakery Square 2.0 Bridge, 6425 Penn Ave, Pittsburgh, PA
Due: Thursday 8/31

Overview:

Google currently leases several floors in two adjacent buildings on either side of Penn Avenue. These two buildings are connected by an enclosed pedestrian bridge on the 5th floor. Google is requesting proposals for a reactive, experiential installation to be integrated into the bridge.

Requirements:

Create a joyous experience for those passing through.
Integrate Google technologies or data
Allow for “passive” interaction
Give employees a break from work if they want it.
Don’t be obtrusive for those in a hurry.
The installation must be experienced from both inside the bridge and outside on the street below.

Site Images:
Overhead

Night_01

Night_02

Night_03

Deliverables:

Low fidelity sketch of concept
Interaction diagram (show us how people/data/environment influence the installation, and how the installation influences people)
1 minute pitch
- pretend the class is the client, pitch this concept to us in VERY BRIEF terms.

Welcome to RSMA Fall 2017

Welcome to the Fall 2017 installment of Reactive Spaces and Media Architecture. The goal of this course is to develop a visual and conceptual vocabulary and authority around placing dynamic media in space. We’ll accomplish this task through a series of group and individual projects, precedent research, readings and discussions, and group critiques of our work and the work of others.

Along they way, be prepared to learn new skills such as working with micro processors, integrating with commercial lighting systems, accessing APIs, basic electronics, and programming languages like Processing or node.js.

You won’t need any programming or electronics experience to succeed in the class. However, if you’ve never written code or blinked an LED, you may have to put in some extra time learning the new skills on your own.