The goal of this project is to design an art piece for the yearly light festival GLOW. To do this, requires combining artistic creativity with engineering skills. GLOW gave the team an open canvas to come up with a new idea for the installation. The only things that GLOW would like to see in the final idea are originality, lights, sound and a full experience. After a long time of brainstorming, the team came up with the idea of a big ‘Lava lamp’, named Extasia Lumina, that would an interactive experience to the visitors of GLOW.
Project results
The conclusion of the project is that everything is now designed in the digital environment. The lava lamp, the surrounding construction, the lights and the full experience. The structure of the Lava Lamp consists of several parts; a bottom part, a transparent middle chamber and a top part. Each part has been designed in detail in Solidworks and the required materials have been chosen. The electronic system comprises a main Raspberry Pi controller and several secondary Arduino controllers. Arduino can handle different types of interfaces, such as DMX (used for the lights) and I2C (used for communication between the Lava Lamp, the individual Tiles and the Totems). Furthermore, the power system was designed and the required sensors were selected.
Unfortunately the team could not to build a complete prototype due to time and budget limitations. However, a small prototype was created to test several of the effects. Furthermore, all mechanical structures have been designed or and all required components were selected. The team also created a build and installation guide for the Exstasia Lumina experience, that hopefully will shine at Glow in the future.