Triangular Series — An Immersive Lighting Installation

We thought we’d dig through the archives and share a fun project that our team worked on under the Midnight Commercial banner. Since then, Midnight Commercial merged with Puppy Love and the team continues to innovate, bringing the digital and physical worlds together with immersive experiences.

We have some fun projects coming up that we’re excited to share, but until then, a quick flashback…

The team was commissioned by Design Miami / Basel to create an interactive, massive sculpture installation at Messe Basel.

Triangular Series was the result. Conceived by Jamie Zigelbauma, Triangular Series was a site-specific lighting installation composed of numerous, truncated tetrahedral forms. Each object is an individual. They can sense each other and the physiological rhythms of beings beneath them. Aliens of a sort, their respiration is a movement of light. Like the cells in our hearts and the clocks on our walls their rhythms affect each other through the process of entrainment. The outcome is an emergent, undesigned dance of light from the ceiling swarm and triangular projections below.

Growing on the boundaries of human movement paths, they interact with the cohabitants of their space. Walk beneath them and you become part of a new, syncopated dialog — an autonomic communication with the other.

Each form in Triangular Series is programmed as an independent, synthetic organism with digital senses, internal respiration, and luminous ‘breath.’ The forms communicate with each other through the process of entrainment — they are in a constant process of synchronization and disruption. Via specialized sensors in each form, this rhythm is in dialog with the motion of people walking below. The largest tetrahedral can sense the heart rate of an individual standing directly beneath it. The form synchronizes with the individual’s heartbeat, and then spreads their pulse through entire installation.