PARTICLES / Daito MANABE & Motoi ISHIBASHI from stereolux on Vimeo.

Pixels, no longer merely abstract ephemera, become kinetic sculpture in the latest interactive installation work by masters of new media Daito Manabe and Motoi Ishibashi. The focus of the work, the creators say, is no less than the “field of vision.”

In Nantes, France, at Stereolux, those pixels – in the form of LED-lit balls – take on a kind of roller-coaster ride along metal tracks, producing dazzling flashes of light in space as they roll. The effect becomes ephemeral again, and as your eyes struggle to process the image, mirrors our latest inquiries into the world of perception and sub-atomic particles.

Full description:

In the context of Le Voyage à Nantes, Stereolux presents PARTICLES / Daito MANABE & Motoi ISHIBASHI
This is an art installation which is able to create a visionary beautiful dots pattern of blinking innumerable illuminations floating in all directions on the air. The number of balls with a built-in LED, pass through one after another on the rail “8-spiral shape.” We see this phenomenon like “the light particle float around” because the balls radiate in various timing.
The position of each ball is determined via total of 17 control points on the rail. Every time a ball passes through one of them, the respective ball’s positional information is transmitted via a built-in infrared sensor. During the time the ball travels between one control points to the next, this position is calculated based on its average speed. The data for regulating the balls’ luminescence are divided by the control point segments and are switched every time a ball passes on a control point.
Planning and software development: Daito Manabe (4nchor5 La6, Rhizomatiks)
System design and hardware development: Motoi Ishibashi (4nchor5 La6,Rhizomatiks, DGN)
Rail structure design and production: Seiichi Saito (Rhizomatiks) and Youichi Sakamoto (Rhizomatiks)
June 30 – august 19 2012
Stereolux à La Fabrique
4 bd Léon Bureau 44200 Nantes
More : stereolux.org/exposition/particles-daito-manabe-motoi-ishibashi-30-06-2012

I love this quote from the video: “We use new technologies in the same way a painter uses a pencil.”

A timelapse of the installation:

Montage de l’installation Particles / Daito Manabe & Motoi Ishibashi / Stereolux Nantes (du 30 juin au 19 août 2012) from stereolux on Vimeo.

Thanks to our friend Adrien at Stereolux for sharing the work with CDM.