Luciferins
(2018-2021) (shown here: 15 x 15 feet)
Custom graphics, interaction and sound control code; 30 lbs of wool; Unix scripts; Network Packet traffic; 7-Channel Audio; Depth Camera; Field Recordings, live radio stations
Interactive Installation
Influenced by the cultural shifts that technology creates, this series of fiber installations—The Masquerades of the Soft Machines—imagines a future dystopia warped by technology. The surreptitious collection of personal data has led to a humanity controlled by the machine. Luciferins is one project in this series.
Luciferins—inspired by bioluminescent fish and the plethora of invisible network traffic that surrounds us—is an interactive environment of hanging fiber structures, filling a 15 x 15 foot space. The patterns used to create the felted wool structures were generated using code and Voronoi algorithms. Depth cameras are used to sense viewers in the space, as well as the fibers structures themselves. Many fiber structures are distributed throughout the space, creating a layered environment that envelops the viewer’s body. As viewers move through the environment, the fiber structures closest to them illuminate with colorful graphical animations. After a short period of time in one location, a graphical portal opens to show network communication packets, which are also invisibly traversing the space. Sonic field and radio recordings play in a 7-channel sound system. The portal opens only for a few seconds before returning the room to its normal state.
Luciferins makes our digital networks perceptible when they are often imperceptible. The infrastructure that facilitates communication largely remains hidden. Luciferins’ network becomes perceptible by movement of the body. It gives viewers a sense of the invisible activity that surrounds them—just as a swimmer would make a dwelling of sea sparkle appear by swimming through it. Luciferins seeks to not only be an experience, but to open up the conversation about control and privacy in one of our last frontiers.