Justin Lui

Sketches showing the proposed full-size installation in the Wight Gallery, by the T-wall.  The overhead structure is made of modules of window screens, which hold individual fibers in place.

The filaments now hang longer, and formally they have a ‘flow’, evolving from a more regular system up top, to a more organic and naturally-accumulating mass at the bottom.  

For the lighting animation, I looked again at fireflies.  In this video, the fireflies have gradually synced their light pulses, in order to collectively attract mating partners.

These videos show my current fiber-optic arrangement with a very preliminary firefly-like lighting sequence.  I’d like to have the animation fluctuate somewhere between that of an autonomous firefly light pattern, and a responsive one that is activated by people’s localized presence (like my end-of-quarter LED installation).

A slight adjustment to the LED canopy, changing the heights of the LED+rods, making a more random LED arrangement which moves a step away from the grid.

Here finally is a new post after a long absence (I’ve been busy working on the project).  After several experiments with various materials, I’ve settled on the arrangement from the fiber-optic schemes, but with LEDs attached to acrylic rods, instead of fiber-optic filaments.

The presence of people triggers the LEDs to light up in localized patches, forming and activating an architectural surface that is ambiguous and dynamic, rather than continuous and static.

The installation (as I presented it at the end-of-quarter thesis review) was only a portion of the full-size that was possible with the equipment I had on hand.  The following images show the maximum size that is possible with the electronics hardware I currently have (though the plan is to multiply the hardware to further expand the installation size):