Artist – Judy Jheung
Hardware and software design – Miles Thorogood

2010, Gallery Gachet, Vancouver.

Working with artist Judy Jheung, with additional assistance by Jason Lange.
Enlighten Therapy is a turn taking game for two. Players build a path that the other player cannot intersect. The game ends when one player cannot make any further moves.

Photographs courtesy of Judy Jheung

The implementation of the game for Enlighten Therapy is of an 8×8 grid stretched along the floor in a crescent shape. At each intersection of the grid is an LED light, with half the total number also able to sense when someone steps on the intersection.
The game can be in one of three states. The default sate is of rotating constellations displayed in amber color when no body is interacting with the game. When a player is sensed the game switches to the start board of blue and white LED light, and amber between these colors. As a player walks between their color the amber switches to their color, creating a path. The final state is the winning state, and the winning path is flashed several times before returning back to the constellations.

Technology for Enlighten Therapy was contained in a totally embedded system, running off the MondoMatrix platform. Using the LED Matrix to control dimming and color mixing of the 64 LED lights.
The sensors are an FDR round type. I was able to punch a hole through the middle of these to allow the LED to be seen using a hole punch. There was little change in the resolution of the sensor. The sensors were brought into the microcontroller through a multiplexer system that only tied up 4 general IO pins and a single analog input.