February 2023
During a couple of experimental weeks at Stockholm University of the Arts, I sought to create a light installation that lit up based on your position in the room. For my chosen fixture, I chose regular LED-based flourescent lights. There's a certain quality you get when you combine the intricate technology behind proximity-based lighting with the cheap simplicity of flourescent lights. The smoothness of a circular lighting effect in the Resolume program was satisfyingly choppy when the lights tried to mimic it in real life. Intricate simplicity was born. The lights also allowed me to create a 3D-space quite easily, which was necessary for the second part: Mammal Dance Party. Named after the way the lights were triggered, I combined Resolume with a thermal camera, to take advantage of the fact that LED-lights don't get hotter than humans. Simply by exerting a heat signature larger than that of the lights, the participant is able to control the lights. This effect was choppier than I had hoped, but is in retrospect quite enjoyable, as if a specter is following in the footsteps of the living.