Installation: Overture

Overture by Takram Design

Interactive LED lighting installation by Takram, Japan

This installation in Milan is composed of 100 light bulb suspended in a 120 square meter room lined with arch-shaped mirrors and a floor covered in crushed marble gravel.

Each bulb contains water and an LED that illuminates the surface of water from above. Touching the bulb initiates the wave-like sequence of brightening and fading pulsations, roughly analogous to heartbeats.

Video: O (Omicron)

O (Omicron) by Romain Tardy (AntiVJ)

A permanent installation at Hala Stulecia in Wroclaw, Poland When opened, Hala Stulecia was the largest reinforced concrete structure in the world. With a diameter of 65m it was home to the largest dome built since the Pantheon in Rome eighteen centuries earlier.

The piece proposed for the Centennial Hall of Wroclaw is based around the notion of timelessness in architecture, and the idea of what future has meant throughout the 20th century.

Taking the 1910’s as a starting point (the dome was erected in 1913), historical and artistic references were used to reveal the architecture of the space.

By using references such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis or the utopian projects of Archigram to confront the different visions of the future at different times, Romain Tardy and Thomas Vaquié were interested in trying to create a vision of a future with no precise time reference. A timeless future.

Installation: Neon Explosions

"Neon Explosions" by Olivia Steele

Neon art is becoming increasingly trendy, but conceptual artist Olivia Steele takes it to a whole new level. She uses neon lighting to charge spaces with ironic and spiritual meaning.

Event: Lights at Longwood Gardens

"Light" by British artist Bruce Munro

The exhibition at Longwood Gardens outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania includes six outdoor and two indoor large scale site-specific installations featuring a number of impressive translucent silos constructed from bottles. “Light” is on display through June 9th through September 29th.

Installation: In Order to Control

"In Order to Control" an Interactive Typographic Installation by Nota Bene Visual

Installation: Cosmic Quilt

"Cosmic Quilt" by the design firm The Principals and the Art Institute of New York

This electronic "quilt" measures 8-feet by 16-feet by 12-feet and is comprised of 3,000 separate parts. It is equipped with motors and micro-controllers that react to visitors walking beneath the piece. When it's going full-tilt, it looks like an indoor version of the aurora borealis.

Photography: Tokyo Layers

"Tokyo Layers" by Makoto Sasaki

Each photo in this collection by Japanese artist Makoto Sasaki has been digitally enhanced to appear to be even busier still than the normal day-to-day press of traffic actually is.  His long exposure photos layer the lights of the city's traffic and buildings to convey the frenetic energy of the city. 

Event: Tokyo Hotaru Festival

100,000 Solar Powered LED lights float down the Sumida River

At the Tokyo Hotaru Festival, the sea of blue LED lights flowed past the Tokyo Sky Tree, a radio broadcast tower that was completed in 2011 and is now the second tallest structure in the world after the Burj Khalifa. The event, which took place just a day after the emergence of the amazing ‘supermoon’ on Saturday.

Dubbed “prayer stars,” the LEDs were provided by Panasonic, who claims that the balls, which were designed to light up upon contact with water, were 100% powered by solar energy. After illuminating a large stretch of the river, which also hosts a popular fireworks festival in the summer, the LEDs were all caught in a large net.

Installation: Future Self

"Future Self" performance installation by London-based Random International

This interactive work is a study in human movement mirroring interaction in dance, light and sound, while exploring the self - present and future. It attempts to reveal what it can about one’s identity and the relationship which we have with our own self image reflecting and rendering one’s movements in light resulting in a three-dimensional ‘living’ sculpture, derived from the composite gestures of those who surround it; represented in an illuminated presence - another version of themselves.

   

Installation: Manta Rhei

"Manta Rhei" OLED-­based fixture from Selux and ART+COM

The luminaire consists of ten 1.2-meter long, flexible metal lamellas each of which carries ten paper thin OLED-modules. Thin steel wires attach the blades to small motors hidden in the ceiling. Being individually controllable these motors move the lamellas ends up and down like wings, and permit the 2.4-meter wide fixtures body to perform different movement patterns, e.g. it can float like a manta ray.

Sculpture: Hot Spot

"Hot Spot" by Mona Hatoum, 2006.

Video: Lightpainting in Bullet Time

Richard Kendall and his team experimented with 93 cameras and a "bullet time" rig to create this astonishing little video.

Photography: Light Paintings

Light Paintings by Dennis Calvert

Photographer Dennis Calvert does not use digital manipulation for any of his pictures. With the right exposure on his camera, he swings around glow sticks in a dark room or outdoors at night to create his desired visual effect.

Installation: Hope and Dream

"Hope and Dream" a light sculpture by Makoto Tojiki

Makoto Tojiki developed "Hope and Dream," an illuminated kinetic sculptural installation for luxury beauty brand Clé de Peau Beauté as part of their "L'art de La Radiance" exhibition to mark the brand's 30th anniversary celebration at Artistree in Hong Kong. The piece begins with a young girl releasing a bird from her outstretched hands.  As the moving light continues, each of the additional components captures the bird in a moment of flight.

Installation: End Piece

"End Piece" by David Hall

To coincide with the end of analogue TV in the UK on April 18, this exhibition by video art pioneer David Hall features the new commission ‘1001 TV Sets (End Piece)’, 1972-2012. The work features 1001 cathode ray tube TV sets, of various ages, all tuned to random analogue stations which, as the signals are turned off between April 4-14, will gradually change the sound in the space from a cacophony of overlapping audio to a hiss of white noise.  It is currently on exhibit at London’s Ambika P3.

Installation: Mauritian Sunset

"Mauritian Sunset" by Sandy Smith, January 2006

"Mauritian Sunset" was made for the 'Great Artspectations' exhibition at The Embassy Gallery in Edinburgh. A relatively small gallery, and another 2 artists to share the space with, meant that the work had to be as self contained as possible. As the gallery also had large windows, letting in light which could ruin the soft lighting effects of the work, the wall had to be as 'perfect' and light-proof as possible.

The resulting wall stretched accross the centre of the main room of the gallery, wall to wall and floor to ceiling, the rear of the computers facing the windows onto the street. A small doorway was built into the wall, only five and a half foot tall, and two foot wide. The monitors facing forwards showed flat colour, working over the wall to create a rough gradient representation of a classic sunset.

Installation: Dune

Dune by Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde

"Dune" is an interactive landscape that interacts with human behavior. This hybrid of nature and technology exists out of large amounts of fibers which brighten according to the sounds and motion of passing visitors. DUNE 4.2 is a permanent interactive landscape residing alongside the Maas River in Rotterdam, NL. This public artwork of 60 meters utilizes less than 60 Watts while intuitively interacting with its visitors; rendering the installation sustainable as well as cutting edge in construction. It will exhibited in the 18th Art Biennale of Sydney, Australia on June 27, 2012.

  

Installation: Moon Dust

"Moon Dust (Apollo 17)" by Spencer Finch, 2009.

This hanging light piece represents precisely the chemical composition of moon dust, that was analyzed on the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. Each light bulb stands for a different atom, the smallest ones represent Oxygen and the large bulbs standing for heavier atoms such as Iron and Chromium.

  

Installation: Memory Cloud

"Memory Cloud" by RE:site and Metalab

Memory Cloud is the winning commission awarded to RE:Site (Norman Lee and Shane Allbritton) and METALAB (Andrew Vrana, Joe Meppelink, Michael Gonzales and Thomas Behrman) by Texas A&M University for exhibition in the new Memorial Student Center at the 12th Man Hall. Through a competition and short-list interview process, the team demonstrated the ability to harness the potential of programmable LEDs, remote sensing, parametric design and digital fabrication to create an open ended narrative of the story of the University through animated silhouettes representing the past and present student life on the campus.

Sculpture: Embodiment

"Embodiment" by Eric Franklin

Photographed by Brad Carlile