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160 Light Tubes Create a Giant A/V Experience

The Lyon-based multimedia agency Trafik’s latest installation can result in 160 different soundtracks for viewers, depending on the interaction mode.
Screencap by the author

After creating the Desperados Blacklisted installation for Hotel du Duc in Paris this September, the Lyon-based graphic design and multimedia agency Trafik turned to creating a gigantic light and sound installation called 160 for the River Festival Nights of Singapore. The group recently published a video of 160, an interactive installation nearly 200' long, 13' wide and 10' in height.

Trafik built the frame out of steel, and used wood for the floor. The work is composed of 20 frames, each composed of eight light tubes, for a total of 160 total light tubes. Each light tube is made of strip LED surrounded by semi-opaque plastic tube to give the installation a neon light effect in 360 degrees.

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Courtesy of Trafik

“The basic idea was to create a large scale installation [that] can be seen from afar and several point of views,” Trafik’s Joël Rodière tells The Creators Project. “Moreover, we wanted people interact and play with it in real-time.”

Trafik developed 160’s controller and software interface themselves. Rodière says that all lights are controlled live via DMX protocol.

Courtesy of Trafik

“The sound and light are closely linked: when a luminous tube lights a sound is produced,” Rodière says. “So we can say that we have 160 lights tube = 160 soundtracks, depending on the interaction mode.”

People can interact with 160’s in three ways. In the first, they can choose the color of the frames in color mode. In animation mode, they can choose animation from a dozen available animated sequences. And in music mode, people can “compose” their own light and sound sequence. And, finally, they can move freely between the frames taking pictures.

160 — INSTALLATION LUMINEUSE INTERACTIVE from TETRO on Vimeo.

While the River Festival Nights incarnation of 160 was dismantled at the end of November, Rodière says that Trafik hopes to rebuild it in Paris in 2016.

Click here to see more of Trafik’s work.

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