Overview

Our lighting sculpture evolved into a jellyfish inspired interactive sculpture that emits lights and is able to hear and speak like a living organism. When people get closer, her heart starts beating and she emits light and makes sounds in her own language. As she is from the deep sea, we don’t exactly know what she is saying, but she wants to communicate with people.

The lighting sculpture is constructed from laser-cut acrylic and a matrix of 12v. LEDs that are soldered together in a way that allows each LED to be controlled individually. The sculpture also has range finder that senses when an object or person is close, and speakers.

Evolution of Process
Claire, Hyeyoung, and I have been working on this project, as described in this earlier post. Since then we’ve changed some of the plans in the design and the interaction. Instead of a cubed shaped chandelier, it will be a one dimentional 7 by 5 grid of lights that will hang from its 4 corners off the ceiling. Hanging it in this way will give the sculpture a more interesting shape.

Instead of using pressure sensors at a dinner table, as described before, to trigger the lights, we are using a range finder that will trigger different animations with the lights depending on how far away from it you are.

In addition, we are including music to the experience. It will also be triggered by the range finder. At 5 feet away the music will begin. It is a zen-like meditative music. As you get closer, the music is transformed by your moment. It’s always the same song playing but with filters applied to it as you approach. We thought of using two range finders in order to have more variation in the warping of the sound.

By switching to the sensors from the force (pressure) sensors to the range finder, we felt we are able to have more variation in the interaction. Also, using a chair in a display is a direct invitation for the user to sit down. There is little question as to what is With the range finder, the interaction is a bit more discreet. We really liked the idea that people could discover the interaction and figure out how to play with it.

More details on how this came together and the challenges we ran into are to come.