Justin Lui

For the past two weeks or so, I’ve been building a full-size test in the DMA installation room. Here’s a look at it so far.

The fibers are looking good (thanks to the hired help of many undergraduate students), though they can feel a little sticky when walking / wading through them. A lot of work was done to create a decently sturdy box that connects the tops of the fibers to the projector. And the camera vision / Processing sketch is well under way, though the camera needs a solid mounting system, a wide-angle lens, and an infrared modification.

Narrowing down to material specifics now. Here’s a measured drawing showing the basic massing and shape of the fiber-optic volume, frame/screen system, and unistrut hanging structure. This drawing is already being superseded by an updated version (to be posted soon).

A final scheme was finally decided last week - this installation will interact with people by creating trails of light as the physically engage and pass through its thicket of fiber-optic filaments.

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):

Here’s a scale model of of what the Tensile Mylar Curtain could look like installed.  The idea is to install it with the t-wall in the Wight Gallery.  The t-wall emphasizes the separation between each side of the wall, as it extends the journey required to move from one side to the other.  I think this could successfully highlight the two-person interaction across the curtain.

One possible logistical snag could be that it partially occupies two artist spaces, and there’d have to be some negotiation with my classmates if this installation pinches in on their project spaces.

Installed with the Wight gallery t-wall.

This image raises a possibly interesting idea: if the reflective surface were flat (not folded as my true-scale mock-ups show), then a person's reflection may collide and mesh with the partial view of the person on the other side.

Our class had a deadline today for an in-progress rough draft of our thesis paper.  The class is taught by Peter Lunenfeld, and in a meeting with him, it became clear to both of us that I had not yet honed in on a specific critical position on media+architecture.  What about it?  Is it a good thing?  Bad?  I had actually known this problem for while, but wasn’t able to arrive at a decent argument and instead chose to keep experimenting with materials and effects.  

While we were talking, I remembered that the development of my thesis project had looked at skins vs. volumes as physical forms of media-inflected architecture, and it made sense to isolate that dichotomy as possible conceptual territory.  So much of media-inflected architecture today is ‘moving paint’ (as Peter calls it) that only lives on the surface of the skin.  What are ways to extend it’s territorial reach, into the building or out into the open?  Perhaps it shouldn’t be a vertical surface but a volumetric construction.