2010
Artists – Morgan Rauscher & Miles Thorogood
Hardware design – Morgan Rauscher
Interaction, software and sound design – Miles Thorogood
Producer – Mark Shieh
Interactive LED and sound installation
2010 River Market, New Westminster
LifeLiight is 120 rain drop formed light bulbs hang in an array from the ceiling of the newly renovated River Market in New Westminster. LED lights falling in an organic arrangement are a reminder of water drops that illuminate, shift in color and spread through the space. A multi-state cellular automata simulates, through computational processes, interconnections of life, where each lights acitvity is linked to its neighbours that makes it a part of a greater whole. Local weather and entrance sensors relate to LifeLiight the current environment at River Market that orchestrates the energy displayed by the cellular automata system. Touch pads on the interactive guardrail stimulate a single water droplet that effects neighbouring droplets. Having a knock on effect, the interaction amongst the water droplets form a complex system where relational patterns emerge, coalesce and disappear. Likewise, sound is generated from LiifeLight that moves through the space, a sonification where an activity that occurs with a light, an activity with the sound is also heard.
As groups of individuals, shoppers, and families enter River Market from the sky bridge, coming in from the outside environment, LifeLiight is encountered as a changing field of light and sound. The weather data from outside is reflected with the colours and sounds of LifeLiight. Additionally, their entrance brings with it an activity in the lights, which begins a reflexive engagement of the living transience of rain as a symbolic element of flow; the environment to industry, entrance to experience. Walking along the length of LifeLiight there is an invitation to interact with the guardrail and cause a change with the lights and sound. LifeLiight is playful and engages the viewer to notice that they have a greater effect on the environment surrounding them.
LifeLiight conveys the flow and origin of water, which is the primary element that forms a bond between the environmental landscape of the river to the human intervention of industry. New Westminster hinges upon this bond as the origins of colonial growth in BC. Doubly the precipitation that is represented through the form of light with LifeLiight reflects the tendency for the rains which manifest within the lower mainland. It is a work of art that reminds citizens of the beauty that is inherent in the glistening drops of rain that complete the cycle of precipitation and simultaneously begin the process of life from the earth.