Project Overview

Triangular Series is an interactive lighting installation that explores the latticework ofrelationships and subtle communications that take place amongst people, the environments they create, and the spaces they inhabit.

The installation is comprised of 57 large tetrahedral forms – pendulous lamps suspended from a large trusswork structure, ranging in size from 98cm in height for the smallest lamps to 360 cm for the largest form that is the centerpiece of the installation.

Each lamp contains a custom-designed infrared computer vision system that tracks the movement of people below it. The lamps respond in kind to the motion of the crowds around them, following a genetic algorithm that determines the lamp's sensitivity to motion, what kinds of motion it likes and dislikes, and the responses it has to different kinds of motion.

Additionally, each lamp is networked to all the other lamps in the installation, and they collectively communicate with each other about the motions and patterns around them. This makes the lamps not only sensitive to the human environment below, but also to the patterns and rhythms of the installation as a whole.

From this multilayered system of sensing, reponse, communication, and coordination emerges a superorganism consisting not just of the lamps, but also the emergent responses and patterns from the people in the space, which feedback directly into the system and co-evolve with it.

My contributions

I was the Technical Director for this work, and was responsible for designing the entire computational, electrical, and optical system that enables the installation, and leading the team of engineers that built and installed it. This included:

• Low-latency network/control architecture and protocol for lamps, including:
  • 120 Hz frame rate for real-time sensor and lighting updates
  • 960 Hz 12-bit interpolation between frames for impossibly-smooth dimming
  • control plane for gamma correction, LED and sensor calibration, and firmware updates
• OpenCV-based infrared computer vision system for tracking people below the lamps, including size, trajectory, and speed.
• Custom LED light engines, including a modular high-wattage 6-channel LED module with interchangeable lenses and active cooling system.
• Custom LED control module including:
  • 24 channels of high-resolution, high-frequency SSDM LED drivers
  • current-source followers on each channel, allowing precise and flicker-free operation in the low-lux regime
  • chainable up to 10 modules (240 channels) of LEDs for 1200 W of illumination.
• Power and data distribution system for the installation
• Custom software for the installation, including:
  • genetic algorithm design for lamp sensitivity
  • entrainment algorithms to enable emergent behaviors
  • network visualization and monitoring system
  • control plane & GUI for setup, calaibration, and non-interactive uses.