Lighting machine

By Chia Huei Lu, Darran Prior, Yathish Yogish and Gemma Alcalá

We were located in a room, facing West, that had two windows with poor views. There was no reference point. We generally perceived light as cold, highlighted by blue walls. It felt like a generic classroom.

The purpose of this project was to experiment and achieve a light effect with two provided light sources, Par and Ikea bulb, based on a previous concept. As we shared a general interest in children education and light as a therapy, our first reference was a sensory room, then, we opted to design an interactive lighting machine. In order to get rid of that feeling of emptyness and coldness, our objective was to create a lighting machine that could bring people together to the centre of the room.  Finally, we came up with the concept 0f a camp fire, where people tend to meet around and tell stories.

Therefore, our desired effects  were reflections, calmness and warm light. By using Dichroic film with certain reflective materials, we not only achieved the reflections we desired but the addition of unexpected colours.

From this framework of ideas, we looked to create the interactive base first so that when the users interacted with it the shape and subsequent lighting effect would change. We did this by using the OLF material, dichroic film and fishing wire, so that when the material was pulled and distorted from its resting state the light would bounce and reflect in a different motion each time. Satisfied with our working model we continued to add more elements to enhance the randomness of the lighting effect, not only to emulate the effect from our concept of a camp fire, but also to add to the reflections and hope to fully encapsulate the room with our desired lighting effect.

In addition, we lined the centre of the base with orange filter and used foam board to achieve this warm and diffused light. This achieved the initial focus we sought to create within the room and levels of light so that people would feel the urge and sit closer as the light only illuminated the faces of those sat closest.