Week 07: Light Composition Assignments – Ivy Shi

Assignment 1: Analog RGB LED Strip

Title: Music lights

For this project, I attempted to sync color changes on my Analog RGB strip with ups and downs of a music piece. I carefully chose and edited a one-minute BGM to match my intended goal of having a complete cycle of introduction, build up, climax and ending. The instrumental music starts out slow with distinct notes, then transitions into incrementally fast tempos and eventually fades out. In order to sync the music with colors, I had to manually adjust the wait time in between. This process was time-consuming, but the effects turn out quite good. 

For the presentation, I bent the strip into a big circle and placed it into an acrylic box that reflects light, making the colors more vibrant. The box also had flat surfaces and sharp angles, the effects can vary when looking at it from different angles. 

Here is the video: 

Source code: https://gist.github.com/ivyshi98/8a0e7f934e04c0791e8dce4398cec6f1

Assignment 2: Digital RGB LED Strip

Title: A Day of Light on Earth 

Team members: Sylvia, Lily

For this assignment, our team worked with FadeCandy to be able to connect multiple Digital LED Strips. Our theme is to use light to represent a day on Earth. It started out with green – creating a fresh, foresty atmosphere. Then the focus goes to the sky represented in blue. Then the dots going through the strips represent birds flying over. It eventually ends with sunset and dawn. In the process, we used various colors, speeds, patterns and lights up different sections of the strips to achieve a captivating visual effect. 

In terms of the presentation, we cut the LED strips shorter and placed them on a box paper board. They are fixed by plastic pins with crystal balls and pyramids placed in between. The crystals also serve the purpose of deflecting and reflecting lights in multiple directions which creates varying viewing experience from different angles. 

Here is the video: 

Feedback: we received the feedback that placing everything on an undecorated box cut out is not the best in terms of presentation and visual. We could utilize an acrylic board or laser cut a base. This is something we should definitely take more considerations into. 

Source code: https://gist.github.com/ivyshi98/b9d4f76742efab4bd1e839ea1722c004

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