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Lightweeds UMNH
A site specific adaptation of the location responsive light installation Lightweeds, permanently installed in the entrance hall of the new built museum UMNH in Salt Lake City. The 75 m2 projection covers the canyon shaped central entrance hall of the museum designed by Enead Architects New York, and is a development of the ongoing work Lightweeds. The work is specified to the site through environmental data and plant species local to the Utah Canyons, that overgrow the 3 story canyon wall and pollinate between its crevices.
Lightweeds
Living digital plants that move and grow directly along live measurements of light, rain and wind sensors placed outside the building.
Digital seeds that contain the genetic data of a plant species are brought alive by the live data feed from weather sensors placed outside the building.
As the seed grows into a plant depending on actual rain and sunlight and sways in real time wind, it's character is at any time unique to the time and location they are growing in, ever evolving between gentle and intense as outside weather patterns change throughout the days and seasons.
When people pass, the plants tremble and eventually loose their seeds, which pollinate in the direction of passage to create new plants in the locations where most traffic is heading. Like imprints in the sand, the evolving location and density of plants reveal which way the building is used. The hard, static surface of the man-made environment is opened up to become evolutionary again.
A living digital organism that restores an unplanned natural flux to the otherwise perpetual man-made environment.
Nature is becoming rare in daily life. In the way the urbanising world is generally built and planned, our everyday surroundings are increasingly perpetual and static through conditioned climates and 24 hour lighting. When unpredictable natural elements such as a lifting breeze, a sudden shower, or a setting sun are planned out of our surroundings, the timeline of our everyday is lost.
Lightweeds is an ongoing work which since 2005 has been installed in over 50 museums, galleries and public spaces across the world, and is part of the permanent collections of MoMA New York, IMJ Jerusalem and the Hong Kong council.
Click here for Lightweeds -
2012, commissioned / permanent collection
Finalist - Frame Moooi Award 2013
Silver medal - MUSE Awards 2013
American Aliance of Museums, Media & Technology