This project explores the evolving relationship between humanity and space. The central sphere and its surrounding halos are shaped by their environment, reflecting how human perception of space is often limited or misguided. The interplay of colors and motions conveys the duality of this relationship—sometimes one of dominance, other times of reverence—while always remaining shrouded in mystery and majesty.

At the same time, gazing into space is an intimate, personal experience. This installation creates a serene, immersive environment where viewers can lie down, relax, and lose themselves in “the space,” inviting them to contemplate both their absolute and relative existence.

Perspective and Context

•  "Lucio Fontana, in drafting his 'White Manifesto', define the conditions under which artists could surmount the static qualities of pigment and stone. In subsequent writings and works Fontana demonstrated that art does not remain in an environmental vacuum, but is continually changed by the light engulfing it." -- Jack Burham

While light art offers many possibilities, my practical choice for this midterm project was to create a sculpture. This led me to reflect on the ideas presented in "Light as a Sculpture Medium". First, the word "drift" in my project title reflects my attempt to introduce motion by manipulating light. This influenced my decision to install three Neopixel rings at different levels, altering the sphere’s perceived shape and movement. Second, the reading emphasized the choice to embrace emitted light as an integral part of the sculpture rather than concealing it. This inspired me to keep the other three rings visible, allowing them to exist as independent elements within the composition.

• "For the viewer/participant of Light and Space art, a significant outcome of this experimentation is that the works of art perceptually condition us, whether we are aware of it or not…(about “Fabricated Works” 1966)the most compelling characteristic of the experience is the sensation that light has been rendered tangible, held in suspension as if in a cloud. " -- Dawna Schuld

 A key concept/”trick” I took from light and space was rendering the object.  I consider the edge/surface of a sphere as clean as the edges of a square which are often used by Wheeler in his work and has huge potential in showing a suspended scene that can almost “absorb” the viewers in.

• "Beginning in the early 1960s, Pashgian has worked with resin to create discs, spheres, and flat works that convey a mysterious sense of depth." -- Robin Clark

To be honest I only noticed this case study when I was reviewing the articles to reflect on my project (it didn't stand out to me as a light art initially), I then looked up more work from her and a lot of them are very interesting spheres. I think the qualities Pashgian sees in spheres are really inspirational, especially the “depth” that a sphere is equipped with. Pashgian’s work in spheres mainly focused on experimenting with materials to manipulate the light that goes through them. Compared to hers, my experiment focusing on external lights while simplifying the sphere itself restricts the light manipulation to only the surface of the spheres. However, I think the depth of a sphere was still successfully shown and utilized. Maybe in the future I can find another perspective by giving attention to the sphere itself. But for this project, the limitation on the material of the sphere was intentional.

Development & Technical Implementation

1. Ideation

The idea of the sizes, positions and relationships of the six rings were altered multiple times throughout the ideation and execution.

Eventually I had six rings in total:

• Three of the lower rings have another thick layer of boundary each at the bottom. They function by shining lights on the sphere only.  The idea of adding layers of boundary came later in the process after testing out the initial six rings. I found the light from the rings themselves was distracting. I wanted the focus to be on the sphere so it can look more rendered. 

• Three higher rings have a thin defusion layer each but the individual LED is still kept recognizable. They function by shining lights to the audience from the back of the sphere and outlining the shape of the sphere. 

• The six rings altogether function as a tunnel with depth.

2. Physical components

• The sphere was bought on Taobao

• Laser cutting rings

5mm plywood to create slots for the light strips (to save materials, cut in four or three pieces for each ring and glued)

3mm plywood for the lower three rings to prevent the light from directly shining into people's eyes and keep it on the sphere

3mm black acrylic (tried but didn't use, too reflective, people can see the strips on the acrylic)

• Spray paint rings

This caused an unexpected trouble: the decision to add 3mm plywood pieces came later in the process after I had spray painted the rings.  However, it was very hard to glue on the surface with spray paint because it contains chemicals that prevent cyanoacrylate from curing properly. I searched online and used baking soda as an accelerator, it sort of worked. Lesson learnt: Definitely paint after gluing.

3. Installation

This is my first time installing a sculpture on the ceiling. There were many considerations of the details I learned:

• Wires

I used PVC wires as the main part to allow better flexibility and soldered them to Solid wires where plug into the breadboard. This was suggested by Star. Many thanks.

I used only black wires to be less visible and to better mark them, I used heat shrink tubes with different colors at the end of each wire.

• Ceiling board

An important point I initially neglected but was reminded by Eric: The ceiling has a distracting structure that I should try to hide.

Suggested by Dalin, the easiest way to install my sculpture to the ceiling was to attach everything to a board and put the board on the structure on the ceiling as the last step. Dalin helped find the lightest but still rigid board.

Since the size of the wooden board wasn't enough, to hide the "messy" ceiling, I could've put a bigger canvas behind/around the board.

• Height and length

I estimated the installation to be lower than what it is but I couldn't find such height on the ground so I saved more length on both the electric wires and the fishing wires when temporarily securing the positions with tapes. However, after putting the board onto the ceiling, the height looked just right (the plan was to view it by looking up, standing) so I cut all the extra length and fixed the position by tying instead of taping and had to sort out the electric wires all over again. This process was a waste of time until I realized lying down was better and I could've used the extra length to make it lower. 

This was a chaotic execution. Maybe I could've done it more wisely but I don't really know how would I do it differently.

4. Programming

link to the code

Some lesson learned:

• It's necessary to "  FastLED.clear(); FastLED.show();" in each session so there won't be light left at the place it ends;

• It's necessary to clear/update within a session too. The color pink showed up without being programmed because the red was layered with the white that I hadn't removed;

• It's important to have the exact number of the LEDs. This can easily be done by testing with "FirstLED" in the example code.

Future expectations:

• Since I had six addressable LED strips, there's huge potential for experimenting with different effects having them work together and separately. I think my trial probably wasn't sufficient.

• The transition between each state isn't smooth at all!!! I definitely should try some ways to connect them better.

Presentation

Image cr. Jiapei

Link to the media folder

Bahaha didn't work in presentation....Very sorry and thanks for all the understanding from professor and peers. Will be more mindful and check everything before class next time. Lesson learnt.

Conclusion

This project was a valuable exercise in both the practical and conceptual aspects of working with addressable LED strips and exploring Light and Space principles. I gained hands-on experience using both emitted and reflected light, learning how each interacts with different distances, shapes, and material textures. Through this process, I also became more attentive to the finer details of installation design.

:) I was happy with the sphere looking very suspended and rendered. I didn’t expect the environment to have strong reactions in terms of shadow and reflections but I really liked it.

:( I was a bit doubtful about the fact that it looks like a furniture...And it did look like I was just mimicking the scene you can see on a planet like Jupiter which I didn’t want it to be. I want to make something more abstract.

Some potential improvements I have in mind: 

• Being more precise when measuring the positions so they can be more accurately centered together.  

• Fully utilizing all six LED strips to create more intricate compositions with smoother transitions.

• Reconsidering the relationship between the installation and the audience—perhaps by adjusting its height or integrating a comfortable reclining area to enhance the immersive experience.