Cloud Chamber.

Interactive Installation. 
Light Sculpture.

1st prize @ Paradigma Digital Macstation contest. 2007.

"Could we not consider this space as a garden that causes air currents like the wind passing through a forest? (...) The people who visit it captures the air flow and the swirls, and walking and standing is weaving the "garden of the wind"

"These images, more than shapes, are spaces in which invisible things flow."

"...think how wonderful it would be if there could be an architecture that would not have form, light as the wind."

"...designate spaces as a metamorphosis of light (...) producing a flow in space."

Toyo Ito. Writings.




This installation is made up by modules that can be replicated and grouped in space in such a way that it fits its specific dimensions. Each module consists of:
  • Spiral structures: made with translucent fabric. 
  • Projection of real-time graphics over the structures: a particle system that simulates flows of wind is projected. The shape of the structures and its translucency makes the particles float in 3D space in an holographic effect.
  • Physical interaction device: a low stage (60 cm diameter, 20 cm height) is located at about 4 mt of distance from the spirals. It contains de projector and at the same time it defines the interaction area. It receives a zenith white illumination from above. It's a rounded light beam with very sharp edges so people can clearly put their hands into and out of the space delimited by the light. When people wave their hands inside the interaction area they swirl the projected particles as if they were touching them. 











Tech Specs.
  • spiral structures
  • frontal projection
  • real-time graphics
  • computer vision

Assembly.

all sizes are approximate.


Process.


cloud chamber

"An apparatus for determining the movements of charged particles, consisting of a chamber containing a supersaturated mixture of gas and vapor, the vapor condensing around ions created by the particle in its passing, thereby revealing the path of the particle."
-- 
http://www.tearysockets.com/CCP.html


-- http://mrtphysics.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/cloudchamber.png

bubble chamber

"
Bubble chamber photographs provide an insightful introduction to the exotic short-lived particles that emerge from all high energy accelerator experiments (...) they show actual trails of bubbles that are formed as charged particles force their way through an unstable liquid..."

"It is normally made by filling a large cylinder with a liquid heated to just below its boiling point. As particles enter the chamber bubbles grow in size as the chamber expands, until they are large enough to be seen or photographed.
Several cameras are mounted around it, allowing a three-dimensional image of an event to be captured. Bubble chambers with resolutions down to a few μm have been operated. 
The whole chamber is subject to a constant magnetic field, which causes charged particles to travel in helical paths whose radius is determined by their charge-to-mass ratios."
-- 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_chamber


-- http://www.universe-cluster.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Presse-Bildmaterial/bubble_chamber.jpg

-- http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/39472/files/23296.jpeg

-- http://www.interactions.org/imagebank/images/FN0142M.jpg


http://cso.lbl.gov/photo/gallery/BubbleC