SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT, THERE IS A LIGHT

2016

"HOME" is hard to define because different people have different perceptions towards this important concept. By presenting an urban night with typical tall building blocks where numerous light shine in the dark, this work aims to evoke people's deeper reflection on the simple but underexplored concept - "HOME", which is a social concern worthy of our attention. Each light indicates a family home where people belong. Somewhere in the night, there is always a LIGHT.

This project aims to:

● explore the relationships between light, architecture and sound

● simulate a dense urban environment

● evoke deeper reflection on this simple but significant concept

● provide a platform for people to express and share their thoughts

● make visitors comfortable interacting on their own

LEDs and Sound

Firstly, lights will come out from lots of very tiny windows in the blocks. Each dot contains different information of a unique “HOME”. Therefore, lights information has been transferred into digital signals in this project. I try to use LEDs to visualize the changes of lights in those dense buildings and present them in rapidly repeated patterns.

Secondly, ambient sound clips in our daily lives were recorded and stored in the computer. A variety of ambient sounds indicate the atmosphere of homes, such as TV broadcasting programs in the living-room (I purposefully recorded some house property programs like Property Magazine and Own Sweet Home), cooking sounds in the kitchen, water flushing sound, boys playing online games, baby crying, snoring, etc. Although the recordings are

limited and the collected ambient sound clips may not reflect the diversity of sound at home, those sound clips will surely make audience associated with “HOME”.

There are seven blocks with 52 blinking white LEDs and 10 yellow LEDs. By observing the changing patterns of LEDs, audience can get associated with a typical urban night. They can also interact with the installation by picking up a key and place it into a shiny “key hole”, one yellow LED will randomly light up in one of the blocks and an audio clip will be played randomly at the same time within that block.

Text-input field

The second part of the installation is a LED panel, which will keep scrolling sentences from the database. A processing sketch has been set up for public to share their ideas or thoughts about “HOME”. What people typed will be stored in the computer and displayed in a LED panel. Such data collected from the public will be used for further idea/project development.

Here is part of the results I've collected during the exhibition:

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