Light­room is an inter­ac­tive light/sound instal­la­tion. 64 Lights are placed in a square grid on a floor filled with white shin­gle. The room is total­ly dark­ened when the vis­i­tor enters. By walk­ing in between the lights, the vis­i­tor trig­gers the lights and influ­ences the behav­iour of the instal­la­tion; the room becomes ‘filled’ with flu­id-like waves of light and sound.

Inspi­ra­tion for this project comes from the dif­fer­ent con­cepts of ‘see­ing’ that are devel­oped through­out his­to­ry. In antiq­ui­ty, see­ing is a humane activ­i­ty, a move­ment of the eye towards the world. The eye was a can­dle that trans­mit­ted a ‘soft radi­at­ing light’, that light­ed the world. In the 17th cen­tu­ry, Descartes and oth­ers made the eye an inhu­man, phys­i­cal ‘instru­ment’, a sen­sor for light, inde­pen­dent of what it per­ceived. This idea is still very influ­en­tial in mod­ern sci­ence. In recent phi­los­o­phy these sep­a­rate views are being crit­i­cized how­ev­er, and more com­pre­hen­sive and nuanced ideas are devel­oped that try to form a sym­bio­sis of the observ­er and what is being observed.

These ideas form the basis of the project Light­room; in order to be able to expe­ri­ence the room he is in, the spec­ta­tor has to be active. If he’s not, he will not expe­ri­ence any­thing. The room expos­es itself, depend­ing on the activ­i­ty of the vis­i­tor, and becomes ‘sen­si­tive’.

In this arti­cle I explain a bit more about the video-based motion track­ing sys­tem i devel­oped to make this project tech­ni­cal­ly work.