I haven’t been posting much in the last 3 weeks because of my current project. There’s a long way to go but I thought I’d put a little image of the 2nd prototype online and some images of it in action. I’ll have to set up a project blog soon to start documenting it. These are only small prototypes to explore potential behaviors and gestures my work could perform. The 3rd Prototype is currently getting built and should be able to not just draw but also observe Prototype 2’s drawings as gestures and maybe even messages.

Obviously the work of  Conrad Shawcross has some aesthetic comparisons and so too the photography of Gjon Mili (see below) but the intentions of my work are quite different. Within an architectural context I am using robotics and spatial light drawings to explore ideas of architectures potential to communicate, respond and perform for its inhabitants. I’m simultaniously working on methods of live interactive notation techniques implanted into traditional plan and section projections to explore the idea of turning the traditional architectural drawing into an interactive interface to choreograph my architectural perfomers.

While ideas of using light to draw are almost as old as photography itself. Artists such as László Moholy-Nagy and the Lucio Fontana explored these ideas in the mid-20th Century. Recent developments in computation have led to new work such of Swedish design firm Front’s 3D tracking and rapid prototyping project, Karl Willis’  Light Tracer and PIPS:lab’s Luma2solator and graf. There are also a number of recent music videos and experimental films using this techniques such  pikapika‘s light animations.