Aurora, 2010

Philip Beesley Architect Inc. - Toronto, Canada

metal, mylar, lights, circuitry, cabling

Philip Beesley and collaborators will construct a responsive forest of light within the new atrium that borders the south flank of the old Royal Conservatory of Music building. Curtain-like layers of vertical cables carrying chains of microprocessor-driven lights will stretch in a path within the space. Local sensors will be fitted into this aerial ‘textile,’ providing arrays of signalling that track the viewers walking through the atrium. Rippling patterns of softly glowing lights will stream out from the positions of individual viewers, producing waves of empathic motion organized much like water-borne waves that might emanate out from pebbles cast in a pond. Responses to multiple occupants will create complex inter-rippling patterns. The effect is suggestive of the Northern Lights, translated into a tangible interactive experience. This installation will attempt a visceral, wonder-inducing experience of the imprint of your own body within the space, sending out ripples and amplified within an ethereal cloud of light. The influence of multiple individual bodies will stretch above and around the viewers.

PBAI, under the direction of experimental architect Philip Beesley, creates kinetic environmental sculptures, transforming static spaces into dynamic responsive generative surfaces. These projects are a hybrid of sculpture, engineering, and architecture that include flexible structural meshwork densely populated with arrays of mechanisms that interact with viewers.

Suitable for all ages

In association with University of Waterloo, Canada Council for the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council