Kinetic Light – Page 5 – IMA Documentation

April 18, 2019April 18, 2019

Kinetic Light – Project 2: Counting Stars✨ – Yang Gao

(It takes some times to load the GIFs in the documentation.)

TITLE

Counting Stars✨

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Counting Stars✨ is a dodecahedron light sculpture that projects constellations based on twelve sun signs using three halogen lights. The sculpture is hung in the middle of a dark room, so people can see the signs projection on every side of the room.

I’m always fascinated by the starry sky and the universe. So for my project, I want to utilize the light and an enclosed room to create an immersive environment to let the audience experience the starry sky and constellations. In addition, it’s rare to see a starry sky in the cities because of the haze and pollution, it is nice to create a place to let the viewer enjoy the beauty of nature.

Perspective and Context

In The World of Perception, Ponty states that:

Space is no longer a medium of simultaneous objects capable of being apprehended by an absolute observer who is equally close to them all, a medium without point of view, without body and without spatial position – in sum, the medium of pure intellect.(54)

Provide that we restore a particular quality to its place in human experience, the place which gives it a certain emotional meaning, we can begin to understand its relationship to other qualities which have nothing in common with it.(60)

Each one of them symbolises or recalls a particular way of behaving, provoking in us reations which are either favourable or unfavourable.(63)

In sum, space and the object that fulfill the space achieve each other to enhance the experience of the project. They are not independent but irreplaceable for each other. In addition, every aspect of the project actually has some relation with the audience, either recall, provoke or repress some reactions within the viewer. So for my project, to make the whole scenario a place that gives the audience the dreamlike feeling, an enclosed space might be necessary. In addition, the scale of the project also matters. if it’s too small, it might be very nice to display and look at, but cannot provide the audience with an atmosphere or environment to experience.

DEVELOPMENT & TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION

PURCHASE STRONG LIGHT

To light up the whole room, I need light that is strong enough, so I went to the Electronic Market to purchase three 12V 20w halogen lights and one 12V 50w halogen lights.

Joinery

There are not many resources online to make a dodecahedron box, so I used Joinery to add the connection between each side.

DIFFERENT TOLERANCE

According to the Joinery instructions, the tolerance determines the tightness of each side, however, I laser cut different tolerance with different materials, but nothing change, so I just set the tolerance to 0.

DIFFERENT MATERIALS

I tried with two types of materials, the wood, and acrylic. And I found out the wood material gives the project a handcrafted feeling. Besides, the acrylic glue can make the project really messy because it melts the plastic to glue them together and it can melt the surface of the project easily, so I chose wood in the end.

Then I tried the prototype with the light, however, the result was not that ideal – it can only light up a limit space, if I put it inside a big room, the projecting was not clear at all.

LASER CUT LARGE SIZE

According to the pinhole imaging, I thought probably because the box was not big enough, so I laser cut a twice bigger box the next day and it works.

THE WHOLE SCULPTURE

After testing every aspect of the sculpture with the prototype, I started to make the whole sculpture.

1⃣ Laser cut all the side of the sculpture.

2⃣ Glue them together.

DIFFERENT HOLES

To hang the project in the air, I measured the eye hook and test with different size of the hole and found that 0.52cm radius is the most suitable.

ARDUINO

I connected four halogen lights (one 50 watts, three 20 watts) to the Arduino and make them face four directions. For the coding part, I tried to light up each light every time (if more than one light up, there will be double images on the wall) and let them fade in and fade out in different speed each time, so the projection will be moving around according to the code.

Code: Github

LIGHTS RUNNING TIME

I tested with the lights and intended to let them run for more than one hour to see if it can handle it. However, the transistor on the 50 watts circuit smoked after 20 minutes. So I took the 50 watt light away in the end. The three 20 watts light worked well.

HANG IN THE AIR

After finishing the project, Eric helped me hang the sculpture on the ceiling. The project is in the middle of the room – the audience can experience it in any way, walk, stand, sit, or lie on the floor.

PRESENTATION

The project was displayed in the middle of 821, an almost square room. I rotated the robe a little bit so that the sculpture rotate back and forth when hanging in the air. The audience understood my project and reacted better than I expected.

I gave the audience a hand out which indicate what birthday represent which star sign before they enter the room. I think I could give them the hand out later after they enter the room so that they can enjoy the starry sky first then find their own constellations.

CONCLUSION

I learned two important things this time.

1⃣Making prototypes is so crucial for installations.

I can never be confident enough to make the whole sculpture if I did not know there are more lights available using Arduino that is much stronger, test with different materials and glue to see which one works better for the sculpture (hold heavy things), try different values to see if it change the tightness of the connecting point, try with different hole size to see which one fits better. It is because all the prototypes I did that make the final project step into right rails.

2⃣Always have a plan B, C, D.

Before I went to the Electronic Market, I do not know if we can find a suitable light there. But if I could not find it, I will use the light strip and choose to display in a smaller room. Also, before laser cutting a bigger prototype, I did not know if the projection can be clear in a bigger room, so I thought if the bigger room would not work, I will laser cut a relatively bigger box to accommodate the small sculpture and the audience can look inside. (Luckily, the next day, I laser cut a bigger size and found out it worked – the most difficult part solved). And also if I can not find a place to hang it on the ceiling, I thought I might put it on the display table in the middle of the room or hang it on the ladder, or two tripods with one stand in the middle.

For further improvement, I would like to add more colors(carefully)/changings to the light and probably add a projector inside it to project something through the gap. And adding motors to make the sculpture rotate gradually instead of rotating the robe.

In general, I think the final product met my expectation and the display room was also very nice to enhance the audience’s experience.

And I can never finish this project successfully without help.

Special thanks to Professor Eric Parren, Leon Eckert, Leon Lu, Andy, Nick.

April 18, 2019

Kinetic Light Midterm Documentation

A DAY IN SHANGHAI

Description

For this project, I was inspired by the city that I have seen every day throughout my first two years of my college career, the city of Shanghai and the gorgeous skyline that can be seen throughout the different times of the day. Throughout my time here, I have seen countless photos of the Pudong skyline from the perspective from The Bund across the Huang Pu River, either on Instagram, Facebook, or other social media websites.

My original intention was to have a large 3D printed box with the skyline of Shanghai in the front. This box would display different weather patterns and the sky during different times of day (sunrise, sunset, etc.) of Shanghai by using Adafruit Neopixel LED Strips. These strips would then project the light onto a screen either within the box structure, or somewhere outside of the structure.

Perspective & Context

For perspective, I wanted to place this project in the sense of seeing the city that we, in our class, see all the time but seeing it in a ‘different light’ Instead of seeing the sky light up the buildings and bringing light to the entire city, I wanted to show a new view of Pudong, one without the bright lights of the riverside buildings. Thus this would introduce to the audience a new way of seeing Shanghai, in a situation where the iconic skyline lighting up the Huang Pu River is completely dark.

I additionally wanted to use the concept of how our minds would relate different patterns of light to different weather patterns, for example how the audience would relate flashing white lights to rain or lightning, and the darkening and brightening of the sky to clouds, etc.

I also borrowed inspiration from some DIY projects that I saw online, which they used basic RGB LEDs to have a glowing effect behind different city skylines. Shown below:

Image result for city skyline light art

Development & Technical Implementation

My initial creation process was to have a box with rounded edges with a Length, Width, and Height of 15 cm, with the front having a flat Shanghai skyline, and the back panel having the ancient characters for Shanghai protruding out.

Front (unfortunately this is the only picture I have of the original design)Back (extremely blurry but there are two characters in the middle of the red square)

However, upon uploading this design to the 3D printing software, I was told that this print would take over 35 hours! So naturally, I altered the design.

At this point, I tried to minimize the design as much as possible, with a much thinner outer structure, a thinner front panel, and a thinner back lid with “carved out” ancient Chinese characters. Fortunately, this time printing took much less time, around 4 hours for the outer structure + front and 2 hours for the back lid. However, due to the style of the ancient character, some of the 3D printed areas in the middle parts of the second character had no connecting support and fell out when taking the lid off of the 3D printer.

Back Lid (hole in the middle of the second character)

So in my third design, I changed the characters to modern Chinese characters, and added a bit of support in some spots to make sure that there would be no ‘floating’ 3D printed parts with no support. I added support to the top right, bottom right, and middle area of the 母 inside the 海 character.

New Design on left, Original on right

For the final outer structure + front, I chose this design:

Front and Outer Structure (from Back)

I planned on having the led strip at the bottom of the structure (in the picture above, the bottom is where the strip would be), and that would light up the entire structure, with the addition of tracing paper behind the Shanghai skyline (inside the outer structure) and behind the Chinese characters. However, upon implementing this, the light did not look very bright from the front and did not have the effect of a sun rising from behind the buildings.

Front with tracing paper

Back with tracing paper (wouldn’t rotate vertically in Documentation after trying for almost 10 minutes)

Since the original placement of the led lights did not work very well, I tinkered around a bit with the placement of the lights and decided that having them on the back lid was the best spot, this way it would seem that the sun was rising and setting behind the skyline.

For the code, I wanted to have a sunrise, bad weather, sunset, and the night lights coming on. I was able to code each of these successfully but when I tried to put them all into one long script, it got a bit buggy so I had to keep each section separated. The link to the code is below:

https://github.com/veazeylt/KL-Midterm-Shanghai-Skyline-

Presentation

The presentation went a bit better than I had originally expected, the audience seemed to like the 3D structure that I printed and the addition of the Chinese characters for Shanghai on the back lid. The sunrise and sunset were a bit too fast, and one of the members of the audience pointed out that the color choices may have been a bit too strong, particularly starting with red for sunrise. I agreed with this criticism and also think that I should have used a softer color for the sunrise. Another point given by the audience was for the nighttime sequence, the lights should flicker a bit as that is the way in the real world. This point is also valid and I believe that I should have implemented that into my code. The way I hid my Arduino and the wires could have been improved as well, a structure underneath would have been a better option for hiding them. I also think that the structure overall was a bit too thin, and if it wasn’t for adding black paper to the areas that weren’t covered with the tracing paper, the light would have seeped through the blue structure and white lid.

Below is the video and photos:

Front Back (some light still seeps through)

Conclusion

Throughout this project, I learned how difficult it is to 3D print the structure the way that you originally intend and that working with light can have many different ways to display this light. While I enjoyed using the tracing paper as the ‘screen’ for the light, I was also inspired by my classmates light structures to use the light to show the skyline and characters light up a dark room’s walls. While I personally think that the 3D printing was successful even if I couldn’t use my original dimensions and design, I didn’t do as well as I had hoped with coding the composition and the overall display of the structure wasn’t as good as it could have been. I believe that I could have done much more with the Neopixel lights, and with more time I would like to show a ‘week’ in Shanghai, perhaps on a much bigger structure. I enjoyed working with 3D printers for the first time in almost a whole year, and have gotten some good inspiration for my final project.

April 18, 2019April 18, 2019

Project 2: El wire light sculpture “Neon Space” – Ying

El Wire Light Sculpture
“Neon Space”

Project Description

In this project, I integrated the el wire with architectural elements with shape and structure to create a light sculpture. It consisted of 8 el wires that surround the inner corners of 8 acrylic panels. These acrylic panels differ in sizes and in the angle of position. The composition will perform a light show that mostly consisted of traveling light beams that come back and forth by turning each individual el wires on and off. The purpose of this project is to execute a zoom in and zoom out effect on the audience based on shapes and structures of the light. This will give the optical illusion that the light is traveling back and forth. The processing of coming up with such an idea is architectural based research. One that I found is on Copenhagen’s 2017 light and here is the link to the article that contains pictures and a video of the installation: Link. This installation consisted of many triangle panels that had lights going around the inner corners. When the audience stands in the middle it will give an illusion of depth. Later, I found a better representation that I will adapt for my intended project which the panels are at different angles.

An example of a real architect that embodied shapes and light could be the vessel (honeycomb) in Hudson Yard, New York City. Not only does it look like a giant honeycomb, but from the top view, it looks like a hole with great depth.

NEW YORK, NY – MARCH 12: The Hudson Yards development, including ‘The Vessel,’ stands on the West Side of Midtown Manhattan, March 12, 2019, in New York City. Phase one of the Hudson Yards real-estate development project, which will cost about $25 billion dollars, will open on Friday. On Friday, four towers, including residential, commercial, and retail space, and a large public art sculpture made up of 155 flights of stairs, called ‘The Vessel,’ will open to the public. The developer of the project, Related Companies, calls it the most expensive endeavor in the city since Rockefeller Center. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The structure of the vessel is the same on all levels but follow different sizes, increasing from bottom to top. At night, it shines warm orange light that why people called it the honeycomb along with the shape.

Perspective and Context

Maurice Merleau-Ponty writes “The real world is not this world of light and colour; it is not the fleshy spectacle which passes before my eyes. It consists, rather, of the waves and particles which science tells us lie behind these sensory illusions”. This quote says about our perception of the world around us is not the same as we perceive or thought it to be. It merely signals that is sent to our brain for interpretation. That’s why optical illusion art can create this motion in our brain to interpret even though it is flat or stationary. The project mimics a similar effect that is created based on the shape and size of the light beam through the embodiment of the panels. By turning it on and off in respect to time, it essentially will give a “zoom-in” illusion of traveling through space that the audience can immerse themselves into. Marleau says “What matters is the selection of episodes to be represented and, in each one, the choice of shots that will be featured in the film…” Many of the architectures today takes on this idea of optical illusion, using shapes and alter its size and through angle positioning like the vessel. The element of light enhances that illusion especially at night through a light composition and by emphasizing the shape and its outline. This project will allow us to physically immerse to a specific space and feel the change in light.

Development & Technical Implementation

The development all started by prototyping the structure that the light will be embodied. I’ve thought of different shapes such as square and triangle. I thought it doesn’t make a lot of difference so I picked squares. To visualize how it looks like, I used Google SketchUp to both visualize and make models that I will laser cut later. Initially, I thought of using 9 of these panels but had to cut down to 8 due to the limitation of ports of the el wire shield.

I realized I need a foundation perhaps, a box to put all my components. So I made a box that fits all the necessary components, again in Google Sketchup.

Before assembling them together, I have to get all the el wires connected to the shield as well as getting my composition finished. One problem that I faced is that the shield that I got from professor does not have a proper connection with the el wire. So I have to solder the connection with a head so that it can connect with the el wire. Below is a video that shows the process as well as the modification made to the Arduino shield.

After confirming that everything works, I began the process of light composition. For the light composition, I’ve created different case mostly traveling back and forth to create the optical illusion. For the code, I used milis() because I felt like this would fit my purpose better since it composes the light composition more precisely.

Lastly, I assembled the panels onto the foundation and the el wire by using super glue. In order to glue the el wire around the corner, I have measure where I should bend the el wire so that I can go around the sharp corner of the panel.

Presentation

The presentation was well and prepared. It was self-explanatory what this project is about. The audience understands what’s going to happen by the structure of my project. Overall, the presentation was good because the composition runs very smoothly. One thing that I could improve on is to tape the red light on the Arduino that shines out from the box and it is distracting. I wished I could add more panels and light to optimize the optical illusion effect on the audience. Maybe an enlarge of the overall scale could make the project more immersive to the audience.

Conclusion

My proposal and plan for this project were carried out well and the trajectory was clear. I was able to manage the time well despite not having all the components in hand in the first place. I prioritize what is needed to finish first. For example, when I realized I couldn’t have my el wire done in the first hand, I shifted my plan to finish the model and the structure first. In this project, I learned how to make a model that is optimized for laser cutting which I’ve never directly done before by myself. In this project, I discovered the perception of shape and distance in term of light in the physical world rather than screen visual. If I had the resource and time, I would enlarge the scale of this project. I would try out different shape and positioning of the structure to see if there is any change in our perception of space.

Link To Souce Code

April 18, 2019April 18, 2019

Week 9: Kinetic Light Midterm Project – Tiger Tian

Title Concrete Jungle

Presentation Date 04/14/2019

Project Description As the title suggests, I drew my inspiration for “Concrete Jungle” from the image of a modern city: groups of skyscrapers with reflective surfaces made of glass, steel and concrete. I laser cut an 8 cm * 8 cm * 10 cm box as its pedestal, and simulated skyscrapers with straws. Under each straw was a LED light – in total I used four digital LED strips, and a FadeCandy to control them. I hid the circuit inside the box, only the strips coming out through a pre-designed hole on the box. A large proportion of the surface is covered with silver-colored reflective materials – I picked silver because to me it is the color of modern cities. To create contrast and reinforce the cold and stiff feeling brought by the silver color, a piece of cloud made of cotton is hung above the straw city.

Growing up in Shenzhen, I was never afraid to identify myself as a city kid. I love how during the daytime in the city, all buildings look the same with similar glassy surfaces but when the evening comes, they all light up with distinct patterns and dynamic colors. That’s when it occurs to me that the buildings are not lifeless, and that actually in this jungle of concrete, the constantly changing lighting is a way in which we can feel the life of a city. With this project, I wanted to express my love for big cities and remind people of how beautiful and lively they are.

Perspective and Context More than just an abstract model of city buildings, “Concrete Jungle” is intended to help its audience recreate, reimagine, and for them to appreciate the beauty of the city lights. An extra takeaway that I wanted the audience to get from the project (putting aside the actual result :D) was the inclusiveness of the city. A kinetic light art project, “Concrete Jungle” is open up to all kinds of interpretations, and I would not want my explanation to interfere with them. But to be honest about what happened during the creation process, all the elements – the colors, the different heights of the straws, and the patterns on the straws, are my ways of embodying diversity. One significant reason why I love big cities is that, the bigger it is, the more inclusive it tends to be. When creating the project, I was thinking about how urban people can seem so similar in terms of their daily routine – nine-to-five jobs, working five days a week – but each of them has a different story underneath. Different opinions collide and blend, different values converge and diverge, and the variety of them blows my mind. I wanted to symbolize that in this project, hence all the different elements I utilized. Specifically, the patterns on the straws are a product of me inspired by the famous pop artist Keith Haring. He was famous for the repetitive patterns and bright colors in his works, and a major object that he drew was man. I drew repetitive but distinct patterns on the straws wanting to symbolize city people – all alike, yet completely different.

The constant changing of the lights is a key factor of the project, because without them it would be a completely different thing. You may think that the physical setting already looks complete and self-explanatory, but as I said before, a city is not complete without the lights. The lights are the colors of the city, bringing life to it and symbolizing its “ever-changing-ness”. They are the humanity of the city. Each May when NYU seniors are graduating, the Empire State Building lights up in purple to celebrate that. Ever since NYU Shanghai, the Oriental Pearl Tower has been doing the same. I was lucky enough to see it last year, and I felt instantly connected to the city that I’d lived in for one year.

Development & Technical Implementation Before finalizing the idea, I drew this draft to generally determine what materials to use and how big the scale would be. You can see on the draft that the straws were not how they turned out to be, but other than that, the draft basically reflected what the physical setting of the project would be like.

Test pic running before the straws glued on the box

After I had the box cut out using laser cut, I assembled the circuit and hid it all within the box, only letting out the four strips. I got a piece of reflective paper and cut holes on it, putting it over the top surface of the box. I bought the straws online, only to find that they were a little too transparent for my project. I was expecting that they would reflect more than letting the light go right through, so that each straw would just be a column filled with light of one color only. I cut some straws into different sizes and hot glued one over each LED. Before gluing them, I drew different shapes and patterns on some of the straws, for decoration and also to kind of make the straws a little more opaque.

Still, it was not so ideal, because the straws let too much light out. Thus, I cut out a piece of reflective paper for each straw, rolled it and plugged it in. This made it look so much better not only because the brightness was toned down, but also because of the dynamic colors that the paper reflected. The straws looked more like skyscrapers, thanks to the silver color.

On one side of the box I drew a city skyline, and the root of a tree on another, to echo the name of the project. The city skyline was based on an image I found online of my hometown Shenzhen, and in the middle is the fourth tallest building in the world – Ping An Finance Center. The light of the LEDs is cast through the straws onto the cotton cloud above the city, while also shining through the gaps between the straws and the box.

The coding part was not so much effort as the physical part. Because FadeCandy had an example code that enables an LED strip to show the colors in an image while it scrolls up, I only needed to come up with an image to implement the generative composition. Since this method does not require high resolution at all, I decided to use the most “primal” software ever – Microsoft Paint, also to make it more natural by drawing the whole thing manually with the spray paint tool.

Initially, I thought about giving it a theme color, but not before long, I changed my mind and decided to go through all hues in the image. Starting from the white color, I manually adjusted the HSB values each time I finished with a new color, to give it a subtle and intentional transition. In the middle part, I divided the image into two parts, making them start to differ at the purple section and converge again at orange. During the separation, the two parts go to opposite directions on the hue spectrum, and they meet again because the hue spectrum is actually a closed circle. The colors mostly hover around high/mid-saturation, but to connect the bottom of the image to its top, (in the example code it scrolls up forever in a loop) I gradually toned down the saturation towards the end so that it went back to white.

Presentation The presentation in class was generally successful and went as I had expected. The project was set up on a table, while the audience all stood around it. I wanted them to be able to look at it from any direction, so I asked them to kind of move in a circle to watch from different angles. When I first ran the program, the color remained white, because I closed my laptop, and the program could not run with the laptop closed. I restarted it with the laptop slightly open, since I did not want the light from the screen to interfere with the experience as well. Most of the audience complimented the project for the atmosphere it produced. Some suggested me remaking it into a larger scale, which I think would enable a better visual experience. Some suggested I use more diverse colors and make them vary more. Another thing to mention was that in the dark, the audience could not see what I drew on the sides of the box at all, and only after I noted did they realize there was something there, so that is definitely something that I could improve.

Conclusion I think the good thing about this project is, as soon as everybody saw it, they knew that I was trying to make a model of a city. Though it’s called “Concrete Jungle,” it was a somewhat abstract simulation of city, and I intended to make it abstract. The problem is, how do I take the audience one step further than just knowing that it’s a city? What do skyscrapers mean to them? How can I convey to them what a city means to me? In this sense, the project is not yet complete, and there is a lot to consider. I never expected to take the audience where I came from making the project, but at least I had to take them somewhere outside of that classroom.

April 18, 2019April 27, 2019

Kinetic Light Midterm Project: Walking Shadows —— Skye Gao (Eric Parren)

Project name: Walking Shadows

Professor: Eric Parren

Documented by: Skye Gao

Date: April. 14th, 2019

Project Description:

Walking Shadows is a sculptural light installation with a combination of digital fabricated sculptures and generative lighting devices. Shadows of static sculptures are projected on the wall by five halogen lights which are programmed to wink in random sequences to display shadows in movements. The installation is designed to provide immersive experiences in larger space. When audiences enter the illuminated space, their own shadows and movements will be casted on the wall and become part of the dynamic silhouettes.

Christian Boltanski, Théâtre d’ombres (Theatre of Shadows)

The core concept of this project is to create motions of static objects through the play of light and shadows in an exhibition space. The ideas are largely inspired by art works of Christian Boltanski and Olafur Eliasson.

Olafur Eliasson, “Multiple Shadow House”

Christian Boltanski’s art work of Théâtre d’ombres (Theatre of Shadows) provides senses of space constructed by lights and shadows; while Olafur Eliasson’s project “Multiple Shadow House” explores the consciousness of human Cody by visualizing and enlarging people’s every movement through arrays of overlapping shadows.

Drawn from these art works, shadows can provides instant evidence of presence and motion in a dynamic space. My project therefore intends to explore with such nature of shadow by combing vivid display of shadows and manipulation of lighting sources in one installation.

Perspective and Context

The implementation of my project is mainly based on technical understanding of lightings and shadows, but its effect owes much to people’s perception. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty states in his book The World of Perception, “the world is not made up of space and things” but also includes “[our] own vision of things.” Such understanding provides possibility to modify or even re-create our perception of surroundings. As Olafur Eliasson talks about his work of “Multiple Shadow House”, he said:”[Shadow] is a consequence of your being there.” Based on such understanding, by intentionally control what people perceive at one single moments, this project manages to break the sequence of present and re-create a spacial and temporal experience for audience. By participating into the interaction of lights and shadow, people are provided with a way to re-think and re-process the perception of time, space and presence.

Development & Technical Implementation

Materials:

1* laser-cutter box
1 * Breadboard 144
1 * Arduino DFRobot Mega 2560
1 * USB A to B Cable
1* 12V power adapter (350W)
1* barrel power jack
5* 10k resisters
5* 12V/20WHalogen lights
5* TIP122
N* Jumper Cables (Hook-up Wires)
Circuit components display

Pre-construction tests & material preparation

With reference to my project idea, the installation mainly includes two parts: fabricated sculpture and lighting components (circuits). Since the sculpture part should not be in a large scale, to project shadows on to the wall, the lighting choice is very essential. As the LEDs we got practiced with in class are not bright enough for the effect, I first tested the lighting efficiency with three DMX lights and some human shapes roughly cut out of paper.

The test results showed that with lights shining from different directions to the sculpture, it can create a moving effect of the shadow. However, the shadows were extremely blurred with DMX lights as the lights were consisted of groups of small LEDs. Each of the LEDs will cause a slight drift of the shadow and thus display a ghosting result.

Testing demo shown as below:

Drawn from this test, instead of just using “strong” lights, to create clear and

efficient shadows what I need are single lights that are focused and intensive. From my research, torch lights and halogen lights can be two preferences. So I went to the electronic market to test and purchase some. Based on my field test and the sellers’ recommendations, compared to torch LEDs, halogen lights are more affordable and similarly efficient in terms of lighting.

Therefore, I bought five 12V/20W halogen bulbs with lamp holders.

Since I have never encountered halogen light before, and there were concerns about its adaptability with Arduino, I was very cautious about its implementation. I did large amount of researches, and found this workable reference for its circuits: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/gr1m/lighthouse-3d-print-and-arduino-c46899. I adjusted the circuit and added four more halogen lights to it. However, since each halogen light needs 12V/20W power supply to ensure the brightness, and the ER only has two adaptors that can provide such power supply, I could only test without full lighting brightness at first before having a new power supply (12V/350W).

I then proceeded to build the human-shaped sculptures using laser cutting. The shapes were sketch out with reference to online images using Illustrator. I first cut out five shapes for test and later had more.

Laser cutting for human-shaped sculpture (1)

Laser cutting for human-shaped sculpture (2)

The whole process of building the installation includes constant tests and adjustments. The first stage was to ensure the lighting efficiency and shadow outcomes of halogen lights. In a closer distance, the outcome went quite well:

Construction of installation & programming

The next step was to create the moving effect of shadows, which was to program the lights. The sketch I used was modified from the example code AnalogWriteMega, which arranges the pins in a sequence with switch() function to control the signals.

Since I had five lights, such sketch required using a Arduino DFRobot Mega 2560 board instead of a Arduino Genius Uno board.

To create a generative moving effect of crowds, I programmed the lights to go on with random orders and with an amount of one or two, so that each time there would be a different combination of shadows. The test demo of lights sequence and shadow combination are shown as below:

Then I stepped to test the display of shadows on a distant wall by adjusting distance between lights-sculptures-wall. Test demo shown as below:

With the effects of lighting and shadows almost settled, I proceeded to build a container to arrange and place all my lights and circuits. I again used laser-cutting to build a box and plugged in the lights through the hole on the front of the box. Also, to expand the scale of the shadows, I increased the length of the box .

Three dimensional images of circuit container (front)

Three dimensional images of container (side)

Installation placement & final result

The final appearance of the whole installation are shown as below. Since the lights were placed in the middle of the box, the sculptures needed to be raised up to the same level in order to show completed shadow shapes. So I used a large board as platform to hold all the sculptures. Considering that the placement of each sculpture and the distance among them would change each time the whole installation were moved, I did not fix the sculptures to the lighting device but rather placed them in a removable way.

Placement for sculptures and lighting device

With the installation well constructed, I proceeded to find a proper space for the presentation. From previous tests results, the lighting effect would worke best in an open room of complete darkness. The final results were displayed and documented in Room 825 at midnight, and the documentation video are shown as below:

Presentation

The presentation happened in Room 821, as it was hard to find an open but also pinch-dark room for the morning presentation. The audience were supposed to wander around and experience their existences among the changing of shadows by themselves. But considering the time and space limitation, each time I could only allow no more than four audiences into the room and guided them into the immersive experience by demonstration. Also, since the wall for shadow display during presentation was not long enough, the shadows would be projected onto the sides walls and be distorted a little bit, but it at the same time managed to create another surrounding spatial effect.

In general, the presentation went quite well. The audience were able to understand and appreciate the moving effect of shadows and participated in the immersive experience. Some of the feedback and critiques include:

There would be more space for programing the sequence of lights: instead of letting the lights going off completely the same time, the composition could have some lights still fading off as other lights turning on to generate a more consistent and apparent moving effect. The shining speed of lights could also be improved as now the time span for each frame of shadows was quite long and somehow decreased the feeling of moving. Faster speed to light changing may better fit people’s visual perception of motions.
The choice of lights could be more dynamic: The Halogen lights I used only have warm yellow color. A different tone/combination of light colors could generate a completely different effect or circumstance, but the result would need more tests.
Motion of sculptures: as for future projects, I could add on motion to the sculpture and create a much more kinetic objects.

Conclusion

The whole process of building this project is an integration of research, test, construction and modification. Though I did not utilize too much objects from class, the skills of technical implementation like soldering, laser-cutting and programming contributed a lot to the progress. By doing something “ambitious”, I also got to cultivate my abilities of testing, researching and self-learning. I enjoyed the process of discovering new technics and skills very much, but also met many challenges during the process. For example, because I did not full understand the theory of current, I postponed my schedule for several days as I thought school’s adaptor would not work (though it would). Also, I demonstrated the circuit wrongly to a classmate and led to a server derange to Arduino board. Though failure is also part of the process of learning, I think for future study I still need to prepare myself more before actually starting implementation. Moreover, it can be seen from the feedbacks that people’s perception really varies on an individual level, it also provides clues for my future improvement or projects that I should always consider more possibilities from audience’s perspective.