Opening on Saturday, 19 April 2014 at Oakland’s Johansson Projects is an exhibition of hypnotic sculpture animations that will have your eyes watering—after you realize you haven’t blinked in a…
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While the boundaries between contemporary art and technology have grown increasingly blurry—thanks to everything from biologically-inspired knitted structures to oil that “defies” gravity—there are, surprisingly, only a handful of artists who delve deep into…
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Cologne 2014: the colour temperature of this series of LED lamps by Rotterdam designer Arnout Meijer can be adjusted to create different moods throughout the day (+ movie).
Meijer presented the project as part of the [D3] Design Talents exhibition at imm cologne trade fair last week.
He designed the Thanks for the Sun series in response to the need for light that fulfils different roles – providing bright white light for working and aiding concentration, and a warmer, more soothing hue to help people relax before bed.
“When you think about a lamp design, you design everything but the light: you design the shade, construction, base, etc but in the end you just screw the light in,” Meijer told Dezeen. “I wanted to turn that around and let light play the main character. So I wanted to make a lamp series where the design and the shape was about the light.”
Each of the acrylic lamps incorporates an inner and outer strip of LEDs that can be adjusted using a dial or slider to change the colour of the light from a bright white to a warmer red or yellow.
Light from the LEDs spreads across the surface and catches lines that have been milled into the transparent acrylic.
The patterns feature wavy lines that transition into smooth shapes as they radiate from the inner form to the outer edge.
“When I decided that I wanted to change between warm and cool light I thought it was important that when the character of the light changes, the character of the lamp changes as well,” explained Meijer.
“When you see a drawing of a light bulb from the end of the nineteenth century there is always a sort of wave-like pattern, which mimics glowing,” the designer added. “Whereas cool white light is more modern and straight, like the hard line of a fluorescent tube.”
The collection comprises a narrow table lamp, a round table table and a larger wall lamp.
Meijer originally designed the lamps during his studies at Design Academy Eindhoven and is now using them as the basis for experiments on a larger scale, which he says will eventually result in a series of limited edition light sculptures.
Photography is by Femke Rijerman.
The post Thanks for the Sun colour-changing lamps
by Arnout Meijer appeared first on Dezeen.
On the 86th floor of New York City’s Empire State Building, we had the chance to talk with the man behind the structure’s elaborate light shows—world-renowned lighting designer, Marc Brickman. His most recent installation unveiled…
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The Twin’Z was unveiled at La Triennale during Milan Design Week as the fifth concept car in Renault’s six-petal “cycle of…
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Sparse, a start-up brand of cycling lights based in San Francisco, makes a clean and refined product that truly lives up to the company name. The ultra-simple Sparse comes as a tail light and a front, spacer light that replaces a headset spacer to lie just under the stem….
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Dutch Design Week: this lamp by designer Dennis Parren casts a network of coloured shadows.
LEDs project light upward from a circular platform at the base of the CMYK lamp, past thin white metal bars that split the light to cast cyan, magenta and yellow shadows onto surrounding surfaces.
Red, green and blue shadows are created where the different colours overlap.
Cyan, magenta and yellow, along with black, make up the CMYK subtractive colour model used in printing, while red, green and blue make up the RGB additive colour model common to electronic screens.
Parren explains how the properties of LED bulbs enabled him “to show how the primary colors of light – red, green and blue – on the one hand, and the pigment colours – cyan, magenta and yellow – on the other, interact. The effect it produces may be called the aesthetics of LED light.”
“You can’t really say ‘that chair is red’,” he continues. “Actually, the chair is reflecting red light while absorbing green and blue light. It is light that colors the world.”
He adds that the CMYK lamp is “not designed to demonstrate how and why, but to show that light is the true custodian of color.”
Different iterations of the design have been presented at various shows since Parren’s graduation from the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2011, including a small table lamp in Kortrijk, a version on stilts for a Parisian gallery and a little corner lamp in Milan.
The large CMYK pendant lamp shown here was nominated in the autonomous design category at the Dutch Design Awards, which took place as part of Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven – see the winning projects here.
You can see all of our coverage of the event here.
See all our stories about lighting »
The post CMYK lamp by Dennis Parren appeared first on Dezeen.
Since Edison’s invention 133 years ago little has changed in the world of lightbulbs, aside from the introduction of fluorescents and LEDs of course. Today Philips pushes the evolution with the announcement of Hue, the next step in consumer lighting, and the world’s first Web-enabled LED home lighting system….
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A whirring helicopter of LEDs creates the illusion of a glowing hat in this design by Moritz Waldemeyer for Irish milliner Philip Treacy (+ slideshow).
Six blades, each fitted with a strip of LEDs, are attached to a propellor headpiece worn by the model. When in motion, the blades disappear from view and a huge halo of light seems to float in mid-air.
Above photograph is by Chris Moore
“It has long been my aim for the technology to disappear, to dissolve it into the surface of the work so that the light effects themselves become the focus,” explained Waldemeyer.
Above photograph is by Chris Moore
Waldemeyer also created a basket-like cloak that covers the wearer from head to foot with a mesh of 6000 LED lights.
Threads soaked in resin were woven around a styrofoam frame to become rigid once dry, making the structure light enough to be supported by the model’s head.
The creations were unveiled as part of Philip Treacy’s Spring/Summer 2013 collection at London Fashion Week last Monday.
Waldemeyer recently created 140 costumes embedded with LEDs for the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics and a choreographed light show for the Paralympics closing ceremony.
Other designs by Waldemeyer we’ve featured on Dezeen include a laser suit for U2 singer Bono to wear on stage and laser drumsticks and LED wands for singer Ellie Goulding.
Photographs are by Moritz Waldemeyer, except where otherwise stated.
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See all our stories about Moritz Waldemeyer »
Here’s some more information from Waldemeyer:
Fresh from producing 140 LED light-embedded costumes for the London 2012 Olympic closing ceremony, designer Moritz Waldemeyer has turned his attention to hats in an extraordinary collaboration with Philip Treacy.
Philip Treacy’s catwalk show at the Royal Courts of Justice marks the master hat designer’s return to London after 12 years in the most hotly anticipated event of London Fashion Week. The show, sponsored by Swarovski, includes a specially chosen selection of Treacy masterpieces and a collection of original Michael Jackson stage outfits designed by Michael Bush and Dennis Tompkins, the auction of which will take place on 2 December conducted by Julien’s Auction in Beverly Hills.
An eye-catching and technologically advanced piece is a new design by Moritz Waldemeyer. A delicate illuminated basket type sculpture extends down from the head to envelope the model’s entire body. “Philip presented us with an unusual challenge,” says Moritz. “It was a visionary idea that was difficult to achieve using conventional techniques in millinery.” Studio Waldemeyer’s solution was to weave an intricate mesh of threads around a specially designed styrofoam core. The threads are soaked in resin, which when dry are rigid allowing the design to be complex, but also very light.
The result is an object that looks impossible, especially when you think that it is supported by the head alone. 6000 LED lights integrated into the webbed surface and programmed with animated sequences enhance the illusion of weightlessness. It typifies Waldemeyer’s innovative approach towards lighting design, which has brought him international acclaim. When the lights shine directly out into the audience the structure itself becomes invisible – the model appears enshrouded in a floating cloak of light.
Moritz again drew on the idea of weightlessness when asked to design his own piece for the show. This time a continuous band of light sweeps around the head with no apparent physical connection to the wearer at all. This uncanny effect is achieved courtesy of a carefully positioned propeller headpiece – each blade is finished at the end with LED lights. When in full motion the blades themselves disappear leaving only an ethereal halo of light. It’s millinery for the 21st Century.
The Treacy catwalk show caps a busy summer for Studio Waldemeyer. In addition to designing outfits for Brazil’s dazzling dance display at the Olympic Closing Ceremony, Waldemeyer also created an elaborately choreographed LED light show for the Paralympic Closing Celebrations.
The post LED hats by Moritz Waldemeyer
for Philip Treacy appeared first on Dezeen.
In the first of three posts about the Digital Crystal exhibition at London’s Design Museum, we look at a mechanical projector built by London design studio Troika which uses Swarovski crystal lenses and LEDs to create portraits on the gallery wall (+ slideshow).
The projector uses 858 custom-cut crystal optical lenses, each positioned in front of an LED.
Rotating cams move each LED towards or away from its lens, diffracting the white light into variously sized spots.
The spots of light then combine to produce three blurry, low-resolution portraits on the gallery wall.
“The recent past has seen a complete shift in the reproduction and selection process of visual information, and today we no longer need to restrict which and how many images we take,” Troika’s Conny Freyer told Dezeen.
“We are on the brink of a new age, still informed by the analogue world yet provided with new digital tools,” she added. “Hardcoded Memory is a reflection on that change and on the digital world by approaching it from an analogue point of view.”
The three portraits were selected according to their postures, in a reference to the traditional posed portraiture that was prevalent throughout the last century but is seen less often today.
Digital Crystal: Memory in the Digital Age continues at the Design Museum in London until 13 January 2013.
Other projects we’ve featured by Troika include an outdoor LED installation that displays yesterday’s weather and chandeliers that project overlapping circles of light.
See all our stories about Troika »
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Here’s more information from Troika:
Troika (Conny Freyer, Sebastien Noel, Eva Rucki)
Hardcoded Memory (2012)
2.60 m (H) x 2.0 m (W) x 0.4 m (D)
858 custom cut Swarovski crystal optical lenses, custom software, 858 LEDs, brass, anodized aluminium, dyed fibreboard.
Memory is closely linked to forgetting. Before the digital era, forgetting was easy, for better or worse. Not only is it biologically in-built to forget, the analogue world around us cannot guarantee that recorded memories will last forever.
Photographs fade, film footage can be lost and media out-dated. In the past, remembering was the exception, forgetting the default. Only a few decades ago, analogue photography was a limited edition of images taken of precious moments or the everyday: our grandparents, parents, children or ourselves. By selection, these images became meaningful, carrying the story for, and of, an extended period of time, a life, a person.
Now in the age of endless digital image reproduction there is no longer a function for a selection process, and so we do not need to forget. We externalise our memories by handing them over to the digital realm enabled through digitisation, inexpensive storage, ease of retrieval, global access, and increasingly powerful software, blurring lines of ownership and making virtual forgetting close to impossible.
Hardcoded Memory is a reflection on the moment and on time itself, standing as a metaphor for the human search for meaning and continuity, while celebrating forgetting in the digital age.
Low-resolution portraits are projected onto the gallery wall, generated by a hardcoded mechanical structure which in the nature of its construction limits the selection of available images. Custom-cut Swarovski crystal optical lenses project light from LEDs, which, motored by rotating cams, move away from, and toward to each crystal lens, transforming, through diffraction, the white light into a constellation of circular projections, creating a rhythmical fading in, and fading out of low resolution imagery on the gallery wall.
All pictorial information is hardcoded into the rotating cams of the mechanism giving a pre-determined selection of what can be displayed by the projector. And while the low resolution image is lending the portraits a universal appeal, the body posture of the portrayed informs a definite era or decade.
Experiencing the dream-like imagery on the gallery wall, the visitor is immersed in a digital memory embedded into an analog physical object, reinforcing Troika’s agenda of exploring rational thought, observation and the changing nature of reality and human experience.
The post Hardcoded Memory
by Troika appeared first on Dezeen.
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