In late December I was approached by the Vapor Media group from Ryerson University. They were planning a gallery event called Digitalscapes and had in mind a particular installation art piece they wanted built. The concept was for a jumble of paper lanterns in the window of Thrush Holmes gallery, the lanterns being lit up in patterns that responded to the beat of the music played by the DJs for the event.

I took on the development and building of this project. Ordering piles of BlinkM LED modules and hacking together Processing code and Arduino based electronics to make it reality. I plan to publish a how-to post with more tech details later – as I was standing on the shoulders of generous giants for this project and want to give something back.

Huge thanks to Michael Pereira who helped with the physical installation on the day as well as some inevitable last minute troubleshooting.

The final installation took the form of 5 large paper lanterns hanging in the gallery window. Each was lit by a set of red-green-blue LEDs the exact colour and brightness of each lantern being controlled by the beat-monitoring software I created. It was a fun project, but a lot of work. Physical installations being subject to laws of physics can get complicated fast. Lots of interesting lessons and I’m happy with the final product. Next is to use that gear and knowledge I now have to build something fun and interactive (as opposed to just reactive). Perhaps I’ll hook it all up to the Arduinome controller I built last year.