adi.🍕

Iteration

While I was working on this project, I was also building a light installation for a warehouse party I organized on Nov 23rd. It was also desigend as a suspended, animated light sculpture, but without moving parts. I was quite happy with the result, and it served us well for the whole night.

The structure is a hub-and-spoke shape with a central wooden ring cut on a CNC machine and ten 1-meter-long aluminum channels holding LED strips attached to it. The power supply and DMX pixel controller were attached to the ring and the whole thing was hung like a chandelier.

Here's a video of the lighting patterns in action during the party. Some of the patterns are audio reactive using audio spectrum information coming from the mixer. I used Madmapper for pixel mapping and basic visuals, as well as Max (via Syphon) for some custom noise-based patterns.

After building this piece and working through its practical considerations, I became interested in iterating on it further and making it more polished, both in terms of fabrication and lighting design. A few things I want to work on:

• hiding the wiring by integrating it into the central ring (more complicated CAD / CNC design)
• widening the central ring, creating an additional lighting structure in the center (perhaps not using LED strips, as a challenge to myself, since I've only used LED strips in this class so far)
  • some initial ideas here involve a mesh of LEDs similar to Jason Krugman's sculptural work
  • see sketch below
• interactive lighting patterns which allow viewers to see themselves affecting the piece, probably through camera or Kinect input
  • I think this will make the piece present better in a non-party setting, like the one in I will be showing during the final presentation / critique. I can play some ambient music and allow viewers to interact with the piece one or two at a time.