Aurora Organ

Interactive Light Sculpture, 2009

Aurora Organ is an interactive light sculpture commissioned by Forecast Public Art for the City of St. Louis Park, MN. The piece is installed in the second floor lobby of the Showplace Theaters at The Shops at West End and currently open to the public.

In the Aurora Organ installation, six columns of light hang at various elevations above the theater’s grand stairway entrance. On the second-floor landing, six illuminated glass sensors are inset in the wooden hand railing and cycle through a palette of colors, beckoning viewers to approach. Each time a person taps or touches a railing sensor, a band of its current color is added to the corresponding column. The size and/or speed of the pulse is determined by the length of time someone touches the railing sensor.

Originally commissioned to create an interactive projection piece for the tall vertical wall, our studio took into consideration the existing architecture, light and flow of people through the space. Instead of a projection piece, we proposed a suspended light sculpture, in order to focus attention on the tall atrium and grand staircase leading up to the second-floor lobby.

We decided to make the method of interaction occur via touch sensors imbedded in the lobby hand-railing, which was already a natural site for people to gather and watch others traveling through the building. Instead of creating animations from people’s movements around the space (as in many of Utterback’s previous installations), Aurora Organ focuses on the smaller gesture of touch as the physical input, pairing sensored units with tall light columns in order to amplify those gestures with light.

Role: Contributed to concept, design and fabrication of sculpture. Supported Project Principal Camille Utterback with technical research, project managment, and implementation. Generated presentation graphics, technical documents, and other print materials.

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