City Night
City Night
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Project 3 - Kinetic Light - Yuyao He
Project Description
In this project, I tried to use light to recreate the atmosphere of a city at night. When we think about urban nightlife, images of scattered lights formed by headlights and neon signs often come to mind. Different kinds of blurry and sharp lights intertwine in the darkness, carrying memories of the city’s noise, energy, and activity. This work abstractly reconstructs those memories of urban lights through illumination.
The piece is composed of 15 LED strips arranged in parallel. By changing the positions and colors of the lights, I aimed to create a cyberpunk-like urban atmosphere. The main mechanism of the project is a semi-transparent acrylic panel that moves back and forth. This idea was inspired by a similar installation we saw in class. As the translucent acrylic panel moves, the objects placed behind it shift between clarity and blur.
This inspired me to recreate the way people with astigmatism perceive the city at night. I personally have mild astigmatism, so when I look at skyscraper lights or traffic signals at night, they often appear diffused and hazy. I decided to use this mechanism to reproduce that visual experience. As the panel moves forward, the lights become diffused, blending individual light dots into continuous bands of light. When the panel moves backward, the dots become sharp and separated again. Through the alternation of these movements and the changing colors of the lights, my vision of urban neon lights is created.
Perspective & Context
Among the materials we read during the course, the idea that impressed me most was that kinetic light art should create a space that belongs to the artwork itself and a space for people to experience and perceive. Within this space, the audience’s senses and emotions are influenced by the work and transformed in subtle ways. Because of this, the first thing I considered during the making process was how to use specific colors and arrangements of light to construct the urban atmosphere I wanted to express. During the process, I intentionally chose to abandon colors such as yellow and green, and instead used highly saturated reds, blues, and their mixed tones as the primary colors of the piece.
My project connects to what I learned about kinetic, light, and space art by focusing on how movement and light can shape perception rather than simply creating an object. Artists such as Marcel Duchamp showed how simple mechanical motion can transform the way we see, while Julio Le Parc emphasized how the viewer’s experience becomes part of the artwork itself. In this project, the moving mechanism and the lighting work together: the mechanism alters the form and diffusion of light, which in turn changes how viewers perceive the installation.
I began the project by building the mechanism itself. First, I used laser-cut wooden boards to create a rectangular box structure. I needed the translucent acrylic panel to be fixed onto the wooden box while still being able to move smoothly back and forth, so I decided to design a connector system. This connector consisted of three parts: I created several 3D-modeled components, with one type attached to the acrylic panel and another attached to the wooden box, connected together with metal rods. In this way, once I placed the linear actuator onto the box, its movement could also drive the entire acrylic panel. Originally, I designed six connection points, but because the positioning was not precise enough, the rods could not move smoothly. In the end, I reduced the structure to only three connection points, which allowed the mechanism to function much more fluidly. With this, the external mechanism was completed.
The next step was building the circuit. I arranged and attached 15 LED strips onto a black panel. At first, my circuit design was extremely complicated because I connected each strip to a different digital pin. Later, I realized this setup was inconvenient both for wiring and for coding. I then resoldered the LED strips so that all of their digital inputs were connected together and linked to a single digital pin. This allowed me to control all of the lights through one pin in the code, greatly simplifying the system.
For the coding process, I divided the LEDs into groups of 26 so I could control each row individually. In each row, I programmed groups of 2–8 connected LEDs with the same color to light up together. Their positions refreshed randomly, giving the entire light composition a sense of novelty and unpredictability. I also intentionally excluded yellow and green lights because I found that these colors weakened the overall atmosphere of the work. The light composition itself was divided into three stages. First, a random group of lights would appear. Then those lights would turn off, followed by each row emitting a sequence of illuminated light bars until all rows were lit. After all the rows illuminated, the system repeated four rounds of lights turning on and off again. I designed this sequence to prevent the installation from feeling static, instead creating a sense of variation, rhythm, and continuous transformation.
Presentation
During the presentation, the entire process went very smoothly. In a completely dark environment, the lighting installation achieved a much stronger effect, allowing viewers to fully immerse themselves in and focus on the “screen” created by the work. What made me especially happy was that many audience members said they could clearly feel the urban neon atmosphere I was trying to create. Some people also noticed my deliberate color choices and felt they were effective, rather than making the lights appear chaotic, the limited palette created a stronger cyberpunk city aesthetic.
The frosted acrylic panel also produced a very successful effect. As it moved back and forth, the lights shifted between blurred and clear states, while the constantly changing illumination patterns interacted with the mechanism to complete the overall artistic experience. The different elements of the composition supported one another well and created a cohesive visual rhythm.
One response I did not expect came from a classmate who suggested that I should place a chair in front of the installation. She said that while watching the piece, she experienced a sense of calmness and felt that having a place to sit would encourage viewers to remain longer, immerse themselves more deeply in the space, and observe the continuing changes in the lights over time. I thought this was a very meaningful suggestion, and it revealed an emotional effect of the work that I had not originally anticipated.
Conclusion
The whole making process was honestly not very smooth. My ideas and concepts changed many times because I could never fully arrive at a solution that felt right to me. Starting from nothing is always difficult because every step required me to think about what materials to use and how to achieve a certain effect. But after going through several projects like this, I’ve realized that this is a process I have to experience. I start from small moments of inspiration, begin experimenting, and then slowly modify and improve things until I reach the effect I want. Even though it can be frustrating, it is also a really rewarding process.
Through this project, I learned that making kinetic light art is not just about creating a visually interesting effect, but about carefully thinking about how people actually experience the work. During the process, I realized that small artistic decisions — such as the color choices of the lights or the movement speed of the acrylic panel — could completely change the feeling of the installation. At the beginning, I struggled a lot with how to build the mechanism itself. Later, I slowly measured everything, modeled the parts step by step, 3D-printed components to test the movement, and eventually managed to create a smooth motion system. I think I learned a lot through this process.
I also learned many fabrication skills during the project, such as how to build a large metal frame, how to use a power drill properly, and how to organize circuits more efficiently. In terms of kinetic light art, I learned how to arrange lighting in a more controlled and intentional way rather than simply making random effects. If I continue working with light in the future, I want to explore more deeply how to create a more immersive atmosphere using light and shadow. I also want to experiment with more properties of light. Not only color, but also diffusion, reflection, shadows, and other optical effects. I think these qualities could make future works much richer and more emotionally engaging.
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