Advanced Media Lab, College of Design

Designers + Engineers Team Up December 16, 2007

Designers + Engineers Team Up to Create High-Tech Art
Take 11 designers and four engineers, throw in some sensors and a whole lot of creativity, and what do you get? Campus art that moves, talks and lights up — all at a visitor’s command.

Students in design and electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University teamed up this fall to create three interactive art installations for one of the university’s newest buildings. The artwork will be unveiled at 4:30 p.m. Monday in the west atrium of Engineering Building II on the university’s Centennial Campus.

+ Follow-up Story available at Engineering News.
+ Some great photos of the design and installation progress is available here at ncsudesign.org

One installation, dubbed “Mr. Sound,” is an experimental theater that lets the audience play an active role. Sensors connected to floor panels and poles detect when visitors are touching them, triggering individual sound tracks created by the students. The result is a chorus of sounds that can be manipulated by the visitor.

Another piece is a series of umbrella-like fans lining a staircase. Sensors detect when visitors begin climbing the stairs, telling the fans to begin spinning as the visitors approach them. Students named it “Scyphozoa (skih-foh-ZOH-ay) volubilis.”

The third installation senses when visitors come in one part of the building, prompting wood panels on an adjacent wall to open and close depending on how many people have entered the space. The panels display a blue light. The artwork is called “Wax and Wane.” (more…)