LED installation
fall 2023 - spring 2024

you are here is an interactive LED installation that shows your presence, seemingly emanating from you, as you move around the sculptural LED forms. If your presence comes near others’, your colors will intermix.

The piece uses an Azure Kinect DK to “see” where people are in relation to the LED sculptures. This data is then processed through TouchDesigner to translate each person’s presence into an animation that then gets mapped onto the LED sculptures.

The design of the piece is completely modular, so that the LED strips, acrylic tubing, insulation foam, and 3D printed joints can all be taken apart and transported easily to be installed in different locations.

technical details

Software: TouchDesigner, MadMapper, Python
Hardware: Azure Kinect DK, DMXking LeDMX4 MAX, WS2812B LEDs, frosted acrylic tubes, 3D printed joints (resin and PLA), insulation foam

The physical design of the piece is based on an Eulerian cycle. In graph theory, an Eulerian cycle is a path that starts and ends on the same vertex, and uses each edge only once. This is a mathematical concept that lends itself very well to designing an LED form, because the strips have to run in one continuous data line.

The sculptures were designed to be completely modular, so that the LED strips, acrylic tubing, insulation foam, and 3D printed joints can all be taken apart and transported easily to be installed in different locations.

In order to visualize people’s presence in real-time, the piece uses an Azure Kinect DK to read where people are in relation to the LED sculptures. This data is then processed through TouchDesigner to translate each person’s presence into a shape. These animated shapes track each individual’s location, and can overlap with other people’s shapes and change colors. The animation is then sent to MadMapper, which sends DMX data over Ethernet to the DMXking LeDMX4 to control the LED sculptures.