‘Monolith’ is the latest project from the London based design studio Signal | Noise. The team collaborated with the Swiss design studio Unit for the french luxury label Hermés, and their new flagship store in Geneva. The theme for the evening was the meeting of handcraft and technology and in the first room they created an iPad application which invited guests to leave their hand print on the evening, wheres the second installation, shown here, included a six metre interactive object that allowed visitors to control strips of light passing through it.

The so called “Monolith” was interwoven with “digital stitches” – arrays of infra-red sensors and LEDs, which allowed guests to create and control strips of light in the minimal, high-gloss surface. The structure is made of timber frame, routed high gloss MDF panels, acrylic strips, LED strips, IR transmissive plastic and custom circuit boards.

The custom application made in vvvv by Gareth Griffiths communicates with the LED strips using Arduino boards. The Arduino boards were programmed by Dom Robson to send and receive binary messages which are decoded using a combination of vvvv nodes and a custom plugin called ShiftData made by Vux. The on and off touch signals are sent to the LED control patch where the data is analysed and sent back to the Arduino controlling individual brightness of the LED. See vvvv patch images below with further description of the process.

vvvv Patch: Gareth Griffiths / Uberact
Hardware Design and Programming: Dominic Robson

Project Page | Unit | Signal / Noise