The City of Lille (FR) commissioned the Rotterdam studio of media artist, architect and 2009 Dutch Design Price winner Daan Roosegaarde to build Lotus Dome (2011-2012), an upcoming living aluminum foil structure that ‘blooms’ in response to touch and warmth. A “futuristic view on the Renaissance”, Lotus Dome merges elements of architecture and nature into an interactive experience. Or, as the artist often refers to his work, “techno-poetry” – boom

Continue reading.... Lotus Dome [Objects]

[Photo: S.T. Heizmann]

What looks like a time-lapse recording of bioluminescent critters roaming the deep sea floor is in fact a swarm of 9 autonomous UV light emitting robots inhabiting a 1 x 2 meter phosphorescent surface. Created by Mey Lean Kronemann, a Berlin-based media artist with an interest in robotics, these lumiBots (2010-2011) tirelessly trace the fading trails of their peers. An endless pursuit that, much like a computational drawing machine, generates glowing patterns of visual complexity out of a simple system.

Continue reading.... lumiBots [Arduino, Objects]

Created by Tangible Intervention (the public art arm of Tangible Interaction) in collaboration with origami artist, Joseph Wu, Jelly Swarm is a public artwork for the Vancouver Aquarium in BC, Canada.  The installation features 94 folded origami jellies, each containing an LED light module, suspended from a custom aluminum structure.

Inspired by the luminescent jellies found off the British Columbia coast, Jelly Swarm mimics their natural, reactive light behaviour.  It allows visitors to excite the origami jellies into creating beautiful colour and light patterns from a touch screen controller.  When left undisturbed by the public, the jellies interact with their closest neighbours, triggering random generative displays of coloured light.

Continue reading.... Jelly Swarm [Air]

‘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.

Continue reading.... Monolith [vvvv, Objects, Arduino]

Photo/Nykto is an experimental game conceived by Annelore Schneider and Douglas Edric Stanley as part of the “Unterplay” project at the Master Media Design —HEAD, Genève. Edric describes at as a game for nyktophobes (fear of darkness – wiki) and photophobes (the oposite). It is played by switching on and off the lights in order to avoid reaching the edge of the screen. The score increases exponentially near the edges, and speeds up with each change from light to dark and back.

Continue reading.... Photo/Nykto [iPad, openFrameworks, Games]

Created by Rainer Kohlberger and Wilm Thoben (praxis berlin), White Light / White Heat (2011) is a piece for the site specific installation ’shift’ shown at the 22PRESENTS showroom in Prague. A strong laserbeam is deflected by two mirrors oscillating at very high speeds. The human eye perceives a stable image as long as they move fast enough. White Light / White Heat operates at the threshold of this rate. A constant modulation is introduced, flicker and envelopes modulate basic geometric shapes and waveforms.

“Shift”: The skeleton of the space is shifted into a different perspective and outlined on the walls. Focussing on the transformation of one perspective into the other the space between the two is explored through iterative processes. The infinite variations and states of the process are reflected in generative laser drawings. The sound creates a constantly changing environment. Space is made perceivable through moving relatively static sound sources across a special loudspeaker setup. Different sound beams scan the room and explore its spatial properties.

Continue reading.... White Light / White Heat [vvvv]

“The Company” is the latest project by Andrea Cuius and Roland Ellis commissioned by Bring To Light Festival NYC. A suspended surface of 76 tungsten lamps form a catenary arch, playing host to live performances and revisiting the sounds of the 19th century East River industrial icons.

The piece intends to bring back an atmosphere informed by the architectural legacy, a machine being delivered to occupy the space that was once a bustling industrial environment. By either producing sounds or just reactive to the inputs from the environment, The Company is a sound reactive light installation.

Continue reading.... The Company [Cinder]

For the Vivid 2011 festival, Events New South Wales commissioned Jason McDermott and Liam Ryan (of Arup) and Frank Maguire to design, construct and install an innovative light artwork in Circular Quay, Sydney. The team designed Social Firefly, a community of friendly intelligent lights that influence one another. The fireflies are programmed to respond to light from their neighbours, popular fireflies become highly influential, whilst isolated fireflies must work harder to reach their friends. By shining lights on to the fireflies, audience members speak the same language and influence the interaction between community members.

Social Firefly is a demonstration of how interaction design can be dynamic, beautiful and playful, as well as teaching us about our relationship to other creatures with which we share this earth. Inspiration came from lateral and cellular communication systems such as those used by fireflies in synchronizing their rhythms and slime molds in movements through caves, which collided with network theories and cascading relationships between the parts and the whole. These were then shaken together with the Vivid 2011 theme of Fiat Lux and user centered interaction design to create the light installation that is Social Firefly.

More making of images, videos and details after the jump.

Continue reading.... Social Firefly [Arduino]

Created by Andreas Müller, the lamp North is based around the simple idea that wherever you are in the world, there is always another place out there that is important to you and you have a relationship with. The lamp visualises this relationship by giving out more light the more directly it points towards this location, the (magnetic) north pole in the case in the case of this lamp but idea is that a future version will allow you to specify the lat/long coordinates of a place in the world, where a loved one lives or the place you were born, to use as it’s point of reference.

More details + video below.

Continue reading.... Lamp North [Arduino, Objects]

Photos by John Adrian

Currently on display at the National Maritime Museum is a collaboration between United Visual Artists (UVA) and Cape Farewell, an installation High Arctic. This is an exhibition with no touchscreens, no static photographs, and no panels with text: instead High Arctic is an immersive, responsive environment. As you approach the entrance you are given an ultraviolet torch, met by darkness and an overwhelming array of columns of varying height occupying the space. Ultraviolet torches unlock hidden elements whilst constantly shifting patterns of interactive projections react to visitors approaching. As you “embark on this journey” of discovery, Max Eastley and Henrik Ekeus’s generative soundscape flow through the gallery, weaving in the voices of arctic explorers across the centuries…

Continue reading.... High Arctic by UVA [c++, Events]