digitaldeities

condom dresses, YES.. they are beautiful too!

China is entering in the world of fashion on unusual way. They made a condom fashion show, and as you can see, there are a lot of interesting, clever and beautiful dresses!

reBLOG from: fillinn.com

elementalangels.com - launched in time for holidays!

My new website elementalangels.com is up and running for business!  Check it out.

paint in water

Mark Mawson from Sydney captures these beautiful shots by dropping paint in water. The colors and the lighting are simply amazing! Author said that in these color shapes everyone sees what they want to see.

ELEMENTAL ANGELS ...for the holidays

For the holidays.. hugs + messages from nature... just made a store at big cartel... where one can purchase them... it will be soon connected to ELEMENTALANGELS.COM but for now you can find them here:  http://elementalangels.bigcartel.com/ 

I will be selling these little wings and the medium and small gold leafed messenger sticks on Prince Street in SoHo Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.  Come visit, if you are near!

little wings -openFrameworks

AMAZING>>>>>>>>> This project is great!  I totally love the animated wings that attach themselves to anyone who walks by.  As he says - 'so you can be an angel for a moment.'

Zach Lieberman (my parsons instructor) and Arturo Castro taught a workshop at iMal brussels, held May 28-30th 2009.  This partial view of the video of the wings is from a full documentation from the OF workshop - full video can be seen HERE ON VIMEO.

The workshop was held at iMal:

imal.org/
imal.org/openFrameworks/

There's some information and source code from participants projects here:
wiki.openframeworks.cc/index.php?title=OfBrussels_/_Imal

artists who have recieved MacArthur Fellows (2006-2009)

As I spend time here at the Watermill Center in long Island, I was inspired tonight to read about artists that have received MacArthur Fellowships.  I was curious to research the last three years of artists who received this honor..  I love and have previously posted about Tara Donovan's work, which is amazing.  I have posted below about a few others - the ones that are starred.  I had heard of Camille Utterback from my Parson's coursework.

2006

**Josiah McElheny, sculptor

Anna Schuleit, commemorative artist

Shahzia Sikander, painter

2007

Joan Snyder, painter

Whitfield Lovell, painter/installation artist

2008

Tara Donovan, artist

Mary Jackson, weaver and sculptor

2009

**Camille Utterback, digital artist

**Mark Bradford, mixed media artist

wikipedia says this, for those not familiar with the award:

The MacArthur Fellows Program or MacArthur Fellowship (nicknamed the Genius Award) is an award given by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation each year to typically 20 to 40 United States citizens or residents, of any age and working in any field, who "show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work."

According to the Foundation's website, "the fellowship is not a reward for past accomplishment, but rather an investment in a person's originality, insight, and potential." The current amount of the award is $500,000, paid as quarterly installments over five years. As of 2007, there have been 756 recipients who have received a total of more than $350 million.^[update]

The Fellowship has no application. People are nominated anonymously by a body of nominators who submit recommendations to a small selection committee of about a dozen people, also anonymous.

Camille Utterback, digital artist

I first heard about her from my second year thesis class with yury gitman - computation08.  we learned processing and heard about camille's work.

Text Rain Camille Utterback & Romy Achituv, 1999

Text Rain is a playful interactive installation that blurs the boundary between the familiar and the magical. Participants in the Text Rain installation use the familiar instrument of their bodies, to do what seems magical - to lift and play with falling letters that do not really exist. In the Text Rain installation participants stand or move in front of a large projection screen. On the screen they see a mirrored video projection of themselves in black and white, combined with a color animation of falling text. Like rain or snow, the text appears to land on participants' heads and arms. The text responds to the participants' motions and can be caught, lifted, and then let fall again. The falling text will land on anything darker than a certain threshold, and "fall" whenever that obstacle is removed. more>

Quicktime Documentation

Abundance Camille Utterback, 2007
Abundance is a temporary public installation commissioned for the City of San Jose, California by ZER01 – the Art and Technology Network. At night, Abundace transforms the city hall plaza into an interactive social space. A video camera mounted on the City Hall captures the movements of people in the plaza below. A dynamic animation generated in response to this movement is projected onto the 3-story cylindrical rotunda. Utterback’s colorful, fluid and delicate imagery creates a subtle subversion of the bold geometry of architect Richard Meier’s building – warming and humanizing its surface. more>	Quicktime Documentation
Alluvial Camille Utterback, 2007
Alluvial is a dual-channel interactive installation commissioned for a private home. Two overhead video cameras track people’s movements in the entryway below while Utterback’s software outputs two dynamic animations to the projection screens. A person’s body adds visual information to one screen, while subtracting from the other, and this interplay of positive and negative, additive and subtractive qualities builds as more and more people enter the space. This process of simultaneous accumulation and disintegration creates a temporary beauty, where the buildup of delicate grains of sand (or points of light), can easily be disturbed by the bolder graphics indicating another person’s presence in the space.
Untitled 6 Camille Utterback, 2005
Untitled 6 is the sixth piece in Utterback’s External Measures Series. The series began with Utterback’s attempts to create interactive paintings, and has evolved as she continues to experiment with the possibilities for hinging digital aesthetic systems to human movement. Utterback’s installations are generated by a set of software rules she writes. These rules react visually to movement in the installation space, and interact with each other to create dynamic live animations. While Utterback’s work is computer generated and detects movement in the space via a video camera, it shares a lineage with analog works like mobiles and kinetic sculptures, where artists create a framework for various possibilities to occur through the physical relationships between parts of the sculpture. more>	Quicktime Documentation

Mark Bradford The Devil Is Beating His Wife (and detail) 2003 endpapers, billboard remnants and stencils on plywood 335.3 x 609.6 cm
Mark Bradford’s abstractions unite high art and popular culture as unorthodox tableaux of unequivocal beauty. Working in both paint and collage, Bradford incorporates elements from his daily life into his canvases: remnants of found posters and billboards, graffitied stencils and logos, and hairdresser’s permanent endpapers he’s collected from his other profession as a stylist. In The Devil is Beating His Wife, Bradford consolidates all these materials into a pixelised eruption of cultural cross-referencing. Built up on plywood in sensuous layers ranging from silky and skin-like to oily and singed, Bradford offers abstraction with an urban flair that’s explosively contemporary.
Mark Bradford Kryptonite 2006 mixed media collage on paper 249 x 301 cm
Using collage and paint on paper, Mark Bradford’s Kryptonite possesses an organic quality in its grid-like composition. Its convoluted architecture and overlapping details radiate as a megalopolissprawl, a seething microcosm of activity. Often compared to Piet Mondrian, Bradford gives modernism’s vision of an ordered utopia a lethal reality check as hard-edged borders and harmonious planes are exchanged for independent non-defined forms engaging in unruly turf-war. Evolving his surface as a highly textured topography, Bradford uses gesture and mark-making to encapsulate the dissonance and excitement of a metropolitan landscape. Josiah McElheny, sculptor www.andrearosengallery.com An End to Modernity 2005 Nickel plated aluminum, electric lighting, hand-blown glass, steel cable and rigging Approximately 180 x 180 x 150 inches Modernity circa 1952, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2004 Hand blown mirrored glass objects, chrome metal display, glass and mirror 30 1/2 h. x 56 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches ©Josiah McElheny Detail of Modernity circa 1952, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2004 Hand blown mirrored glass objects, chrome metal display, glass and mirror ©Josiah McElheny Extended Landscape Model for Total Reflective Abstraction 2004 Mirrored glass table with hand blown mirrored glass objects 24h. x 108 x 92 inches ©Josiah McElheny Detail of Landscape Model for Total Reflective Abstraction 2004 Mirrored glass table with hand blown mirrored glass objects ©Josiah McElheny The Metal Party: Reconstructing a Party held in Dessau on February 9, 1929 2001 A Project of the Public Art Fund, New York and Yerba Buena Center for the ARts, San Francisco, CA ©Josiah McElheny From an Historical Anecdote about Fashion 2000 Blown glass objects, display case, five framed digital prints case dimensions: 18 h. 25 1/2 inches, each installation view at Donald Young Gallery, Chicago ©Josiah McElheny Island Universe 2008 Chromed aluminum, handblown glass, electric lights. Consisting of five elements arranged in a grid at specific heights Dimensions variable, largest element is approximately 12' in diameter, smallest is approximately 7' in diameter Installation view: White Cube, London "Island Universe" October 14 - November 15, 2008 Island Universe 2008 Detail Chromed aluminum, handblown glass, electric lights. Consisting of five elements arranged in a grid at specific heights Dimensions variable, largest element is approximately 12' in diameter, smallest is approximately 7' in diameter ARG# MJ2008-004 © Josiah McElheny Model for a Film Set (The Light Spa at the Bottom of a Mine) 2008 Colored glass modules, cement, wood 37 x 37 1/2 x 68 inches (94 x 95.3 x 172.7 cm) ARG# MJ2008-001 © Josiah McElheny Endless Repeating Twentieth Century Modernism 2007 Hand-blown mirrored glass, low-iron and transparent mirror, metal, wood, electric lighting 94 1/2 x 92 3/4 x 92 3/4 in (240 x 235.6 x 235.6 cm) ARG# MJ2007-004 © Josiah McElheny Twentieth Century Modernism, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2006 Hand blown mirrored glass, display structure, transparent mirror and electric lighting 31 1/4 x 188 x 18 3/4 inches (79.4 x 477.5 x 47.6 cm) ARG# MJ2006-002 © Josiah McElheny Twentieth Century Modernism, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2006 Detail Hand blown mirrored glass, display structure, transparent mirror and electric lighting 31 1/4 x 188 x 18 3/4 inches (79.4 x 477.5 x 47.6 cm) ARG# MJ2006-002 © Josiah McElheny Scale Model for a Totally Reflective Landscape (Expo) 2007 Hand blown mirrored glass, industrial mirror and wood 14 7/8 x 43 1/8 x 20 1/8 inches ARG# MJ2007-002 © Josiah McElheny Scale Model for a Totally Reflective Landscape (Expo) 2007 Detail Hand blown mirrored glass, industrial mirror and wood 14 7/8 x 43 1/8 x 20 1/8 inches ARG# MJ2007-002 © Josiah McElheny An End to Modernity 2005 Nickel plated aluminum, electric lighting, hand-blown glass, steel cable and rigging Approximately 180 x 180 x 150 inches ARG#MJ2006-001 Modernity circa 1952, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2004 Hand blown mirrored glass objects, chrome metal display, glass and mirror 30 1/2 h. x 56 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches ©Josiah McElheny Detail of Modernity circa 1952, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2004 Hand blown mirrored glass objects, chrome metal display, glass and mirror ©Josiah McElheny Extended Landscape Model for Total Reflective Abstraction 2004 Mirrored glass table with hand blown mirrored glass objects 24h. x 108 x 92 inches ©Josiah McElheny Detail of Landscape Model for Total Reflective Abstraction 2004 Mirrored glass table with hand blown mirrored glass objects ©Josiah McElheny The Metal Party: Reconstructing a Party held in Dessau on February 9, 1929 2001 A Project of the Public Art Fund, New York and Yerba Buena Center for the ARts, San Francisco, CA ©Josiah McElheny From an Historical Anecdote about Fashion 2000 Blown glass objects, display case, five framed digital prints case dimensions: 18 h. 25 1/2 inches, each installation view at Donald Young Gallery, Chicago ©Josiah McElheny Twentieth Century Modernism, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2006 Detail Hand blown mirrored glass, display structure, transparent mirror and electric lighting 31 1/4 x 188 x 18 3/4 inches (79.4 x 477.5 x 47.6 cm) Scale Model for a Totally Reflective Landscape (Expo) 2007 Hand blown mirrored glass, industrial mirror and wood 14 7/8 x 43 1/8 x 20 1/8 inches ARG# MJ2007-002 © Josiah McElheny Scale Model for a Totally Reflective Landscape (Expo) 2007 Detail Hand blown mirrored glass, industrial mirror and wood 14 7/8 x 43 1/8 x 20 1/8 inches ARG# MJ2007-002 © Josiah McElheny An End to Modernity 2005 Nickel plated aluminum, electric lighting, hand-blown glass, steel cable and rigging Approximately 180 x 180 x 150 inches ARG#MJ2006-001 Modernity circa 1952, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2004 Hand blown mirrored glass objects, chrome metal display, glass and mirror 30 1/2 h. x 56 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches ©Josiah McElheny Detail of Modernity circa 1952, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2004 Hand blown mirrored glass objects, chrome metal display, glass and mirror ©Josiah McElheny Extended Landscape Model for Total Reflective Abstraction 2004 Mirrored glass table with hand blown mirrored glass objects 24h. x 108 x 92 inches ©Josiah McElheny Detail of Landscape Model for Total Reflective Abstraction 2004 Mirrored glass table with hand blown mirrored glass objects ©Josiah McElheny The Metal Party: Reconstructing a Party held in Dessau on February 9, 1929 2001 A Project of the Public Art Fund, New York and Yerba Buena Center for the ARts, San Francisco, CA ©Josiah McElheny From an Historical Anecdote about Fashion 2000 Blown glass objects, display case, five framed digital prints case dimensions: 18 h. 25 1/2 inches, each installation view at Donald Young Gallery, Chicago ©Josiah McElheny Twentieth Century Modernism, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2006 Hand blown mirrored glass, display structure, transparent mirror and electric lighting 31 1/4 x 188 x 18 3/4 inches Twentieth Century Modernism, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2006 Detail Hand blown mirrored glass, display structure, transparent mirror and electric lighting 31 1/4 x 188 x 18 3/4 inches (79.4 x 477.5 x 47.6 cm) ARG# MJ2006-002 © Josiah McElheny Scale Model for a Totally Reflective Landscape (Expo) 2007 Hand blown mirrored glass, industrial mirror and wood 14 7/8 x 43 1/8 x 20 1/8 inches ARG# MJ2007-002 © Josiah McElheny Scale Model for a Totally Reflective Landscape (Expo) 2007 Detail Hand blown mirrored glass, industrial mirror and wood 14 7/8 x 43 1/8 x 20 1/8 inches ARG# MJ2007-002 © Josiah McElheny An End to Modernity 2005 Nickel plated aluminum, electric lighting, hand-blown glass, steel cable and rigging Approximately 180 x 180 x 150 inches ARG#MJ2006-001 Modernity circa 1952, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2004 Hand blown mirrored glass objects, chrome metal display, glass and mirror 30 1/2 h. x 56 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches ©Josiah McElheny Detail of Modernity circa 1952, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely 2004 Hand blown mirrored glass objects, chrome metal display, glass and mirror ©Josiah McElheny Extended Landscape Model for Total Reflective Abstraction 2004 Mirrored glass table with hand blown mirrored glass objects 24h. x 108 x 92 inches ©Josiah McElheny Detail of Landscape Model for Total Reflective Abstraction 2004 Mirrored glass table with hand blown mirrored glass objects ©Josiah McElheny The Metal Party: Reconstructing a Party held in Dessau on February 9, 1929 2001 A Project of the Public Art Fund, New York and Yerba Buena Center for the ARts, San Francisco, CA ©Josiah McElheny From an Historical Anecdote about Fashion 2000 Blown glass objects, display case, five framed digital prints case dimensions: 18 h. 25 1/2 inches, each installation view at Donald Young Gallery, Chicago ©Josiah McElheny

weird + clever (digital) faces

Such simple yet engaging use of materials + technology + artistry = very refreshing photos.  I found these images in the gallery section of one of my FAVORITE WEBSITES OF ALL TIME - SPACECOLLECTIVE.ORG - such an awesome awesome collection of digitally stimulating substance.

From his website: Levi van Veluw 

The images that I make consist of often unlogical combination of materials, patterns, colors, forms, with my head as the only constant factor. Each element is consciously chosen so as to affect a pre-determined transformation. By playing with the value of the each material and by using them for a purpose that was not originally intended for them, I construct within the image, in a very small way, a different perspective on the world.

In most cases it is my head that is the carrier of these transformations and combination. The expressionless, and almost universal face, allows the viewer to project himself onto the work. Because the works have really existed and have not been digitally manipulated, each image contains a short history of a performance.

Repetition is a theme I find very interesting as you can use it for different ends. By for example using the same head and facial expression, the person slowly becomes of secondary importance to the form. The elements that remain constant lose their value and the elements that change, become the subject of the work. In this way I create a shift in the hierarchy of values.

The commonplace notion of the ‘aesthetic’ image is that which is free of unsatisfactory characteristics and general human imperfections. This in my opinion is the most superficial form of beauty. In my work I attempt to create a different form of aesthetic.

The unusual and unimpressive materials, traces of glue and other imperfections that exist in the production of the work are what form the aesthetic value in my image. This revaluation of these normally insignificant elements only occurs because they now exist in a new context that distances them from their original circumstances and associations.

Gordon Magnin

cassette tape skull

brian dettmer: cassette tape skull

Atlanta based artist Brian Dettmer creates intricate sculptural skeletons using altered, heated cassette tapes. Dettmer began creating the pieces in 2005 as he was thinking about the demise of analog media in the increasingly digital world. As well as the animal skulls, he has a series of 12 human skulls made from tapes--each with a different theme like heavy metal or hard rock. The most complex sculpture thus far is a complete human skeleton that he constructed made from over 180 cassettes. reblog from: Design Boom

toddlerpedes + other strange dolls

Jon Beinart

(images via: Beinart.org)

Jon Beinart, founder of the Beinart International Surreal Art Collective, is best known for his ‘toddlerpedes’, recycled plastic doll parts made into monstrous sculptures resembling insects and mythological creatures.

Maxim Magazine said of his work, “Michelangelo’s famous sculpture of Italian exhibitionist David this ain’t. But it is mind-bogglingly weird, verging on brilliant. And it’s guaranteed to give your high school art teacher anxiety hives…”

reblog from web urbanist: Amazingly Strange Handmade Dolls, Puppets & Sculpture

a few other dolls that I like from this selection. some are quite creepy but engaging and edgy.

Marina Bychova

(images via: EnchantedDoll.com)

Russian-born doll artist Marina Bychova creates breathtakingly intricate, ‘enchanted’ ball-jointed dolls made of porcelain, with amazingly detailed costumes and even hand-painted tattoos. These lithe, ethereal dolls are beautiful and delicate, yet dark – among the options available when ordering a doll is ‘body mutilation’.

Bychova says, “Creating a visual narrative is the most intriguing way of articulating my ideas and a doll is a perfect medium because of its potential for such visual story. My strong tendency for escapism has made the make belief narrative of fairy tales very appealing as a context for my dolls. What interests me most about fairy tales is the implicit and often explicit violence that lies just beneath the surface of the magic.”

Julien Martinez

(images via: OzzDollsFactory.com)

French artist Julien Martinez has a knack for creating characters imbued with a strong sense of melancholia, with red sagging eyes, wildly unkempt hair and funereal garb. Martinez says his inspiration comes from visual and literary sources, movies and fairy tales, and the history of costumes.

Lesley-Anne Green

(images via: LesleyAnneGreen.com)

Toronto artist Lesley-Anne Green’s creations are more sweet and charming than dark, but are still a far cry from the homogenized plastic dolls found on store shelves. Green’s dolls are quirky ugly ducklings infused with the essence of childhood, warts and all.

Ben Strawn and Jessica Robin

(images via: WhalefishStudios.com)

The Whalefish Studios website, which features the artwork of Ben Strawn and Jessica Robin, is like a treasure chest of strange and intriguing characters. Their dolls are made from the simplest of materials – polymer clay, fabric, leaves and twigs – and are often featureless, but still manage to convey so much personality and vitality.

Pat Lillich

(images via: shadows.4oni.com)

Bulldogs with baby heads. A puppy-inspired creation that is “part dachshund, part chihuahua, and all snake-necked assyrian sphynx”. A sphinx bred with a deer. A woman with the bottom half of a preying mantis. Pat Lillich’s work is surreal yet elegant, ghostly pale but sculpted with such fine detail that they seem almost alive, albeit alien.

Scott Radke

(images via: ScottRadke.com)

From Weburbanist: “One by one, each of the strange little faces with their red button noses and furrowed brows peek out from the strangest of bodies – black and white fish, striped swan, furless hounds and rabbits on bicycles. This bizarre but enchanting cadre of creatures comes from the mind of Cleveland-based artist Scott Radke, who lovingly renders them from clay, fabric and human hair.”

“Some may call Radke’s sculptures macabre, but however disturbing one may find a gnarled, wart-covered face on a twisted animal body, these creatures also have a playful quirkiness akin to the work of Tim Burton.”

emotional garbage needed for digital landfill

I like this project!

http://www.soulrecoverysystems.com

Soul Recovery Systems is an interactive, creative and free “emotional garbage” service providing people with an opportunity to rid themselves of objects that hinder their lives. SRS accepts objects in any form as long as there are sincere emotional connections attached to them. That said, all objects given to SRS must include an object release form: http://www.soulrecoverysystems.com where the releaser must enter their reason for desired disposal. Once objects and reasons for disposal have been received, they are put under intense observation for SRS to determine the best possible method of release.

In the end, a photograph of each object, reasons for release, and videos of each object release are uploaded to the digital landfill where the less burdened can view their once hindering objects in digital form.

Here is the link to the SRS website: www.soulrecoverysystems.com/

And make sure to check out the digital landfill:

http://www.soulrecoverysystems.com/landfill (more release videos and objects will be uploaded daily).

across the street. in the hood. grattan street.

Look At Me 

Look At Me

(DON'T YOU 

FUCKING 

LOOK AT ME!)

Somewhere between Bruce Nauman and Blue Velvet lies the language of power, voyeurism, representation, memory, desire, fear, and bodily exploration. The works in this exhibition are at once completely disjunctive, disparate. Yet they come together with a certain undercurrent of unease, a repressed Freudian ball of fear and desire that lashes out and once again withdraws into the darkness.

Cinema as dream.
Pop culture as nightmare.
Abstraction as id.
Language as power.

Brian Block / Daniel Derwelis / Heather Dewey-Hagborg /
Molly Emmons / Richard Fear / Jonathan Gabel / Joe Nanashe / Mary Nicholson /
Jamie Powell / Jorge Rojas / Jan Wandrag / Tim Warner
Curated by Joe Nanashe


Opening Reception
Saturday November 7
6pm - 9pm
BYOB

Regular Hours: 2 DAYS ONLY
Saturday November 7 4pm - 9pm
Sunday November 8 Noon - 7pm (BETA Spaces hours)

Location:
117 Grattan St. #108
Brooklyn, NY 11237
(2 blocks east the Morgan L Stop)

check out my new KICKSTARTER project page - just posted!

IGNITE NYC (this Friday Oct 9, 2009)

I will be speaking at this event tomorrow evening - about my agave armor, haute couture sculpture series!

Ignite NYC this Friday, October 9th. 

We are hosting the event as part of the Yahoo!'s Open Hack festivities!

Ignite will take place at the historic Hudson Theater (145 West 44th Street) from 8 PM - 9:30 PM. 

RSVP on Eventbrite or Facebook to reserve your seat!

Speakers:

Jay Rosen (NYU School of Journalism), 

Michael Malice (Overheard in New York), 

Bre Pettis (Makerbot Industries), 

Dan Patterson (ABC News), 

Fred Benenson (Creative Commons),

Spaceman From Outer Space (Space),

Evan Sandhaus (The New York Times), 

Tania Dudina (Surprise Industries),

Micah Laaker (Yahoo!), 

Ben Woosley (OurMTA.org), 

Jared Klett (Blip.TV), 

Carrie Mae Kreyche (Parsons), 

Ben Moskowitz (Open Video Alliance), 

Kunal Kandekar (Concert Technology), 

Jonah Brucker-Cohen (ITP, Scrapyard Challenge), 

Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo (ITP, Parsons).

1,000 melting people...

The world wildlife fund installed 1,000 ice figures in a berlin square recently to raise people’s awareness of the melting ice caps in greenland and antartica. the visual impact is quite impressive! the full article is in another language so you can view the translated version here via google translator. see some shots of the installation below:

Solar Powered Tree SCUPLTURE .with electroluminescent fibers.

SonUmbra Solar Powered Tree Lights up the Night

reBLOG from inhabitat.com

As advancements in lighting technology unveil fresh materials, we’re thrilled to see designers exploring new ways to light up the night. SonUmbra is a solar-powered tree composed of strands of light-emitting fabric woven into a lucent web of branches. The installation’s canopy of photovoltaic panels captures light during the day, and once the sun sets the tree blooms in an interactive flourish of light and sound.

We were thrilled to catch a glimpse of SonUmbra at this year’s London Design Festival, where its beautiful glow signaled a bright future for energy-efficient lighting. Designed by Loop.pH, the “sonic shade of light” is intended to be “planted” in remote areas, where it offers shelter from the sun by day and serves as a gathering place for the local community at night.

The installation is constructed from a light emitting fabric that is crafted into a lattice of electroluminescent fibers. As passerby move around the solar tree, the installation strikes up an interplay of light and sound that encourages interaction. According to loop.PH, “This latticed pattern is animated in concert with the generated surround sound and visually illustrates the visitors’ position within the constellation. Wandering unaware or actively gravitating towards Sonumbra each person plays a part and becomes a note in a unique composition of light, sound and space.”