Animate Field by Justin Lui presents a cloud of low-hanging fiber-optic filaments which create a volumetric mass for participants to directly engage in by physically occupying and moving through it. The red lit endpoints of the filaments are locally activated by people’s positions in the cloud. As the participants wade through the thicket of hanging filaments, their movement through the field creates trails of yellow light which persist as a kind of temporal residue, leaving a ghostly memory of their presence and their traveled paths.



The mass of hanging fibers delicately grazes the skin of people whose physical presence in turn causes ripples and waves of movement throughout the mass.

The field of lights in Animate Field constitutes a type of mediated architectural “skin”, but unlike most applications of this concept, this skin takes on volumetric dimensions and makes direct contact with the body.




More pictures of this installation here.