Associated VEIV and PhD candidate at the Bartlett to exhibit at Vivid Festival, Sydney

Moritz Behrens, an Associated VEIV and PhD candidate at the Bartlett’s Architecture Space and Computation Programme, will exhibit Sentiment Cocoon at Vivid Sydney from 27 May to 18 June 2016. Vivid Sydney is a 23 day festival of light, music and ideas and Sentiment Cocoon will be part of the Vivid Light aspect of the festival. 

Vivid Light will transform Sydney into a wonderland of 'light art' sculptures, innovative light installations and grand-scale projections. It aims to be celebration of light-design excellence and the world's largest outdoor 'art-gallery'. Vivid Light engages lighting artists, designers and manufacturers from around Australia and the world to illuminate, interpret and transform Sydney’s urban spaces through their creative vision.

Sentiment Cocoon, first displayed at the Arup head quarters in London (pictured above), is an interactive installation that seeks to capture and express human sentiment through the medium of light. A simple interface allows participants to express how they feel by how they touch. These interactions are then transformed into pulses of light that travel throughout the cocoon.

Sentiment Cocoon aims to represent a collective visualisation of the way people are feeling in the immediate environment of the installation on any given evening. The focus is on the exploration of architectural form, with translucent materials and responsive lighting to facilitate social interaction. Ultimately, the aim is to foster the notion of public spaces as the social centres of our cities.

The lighting design creates an enigmatic display, with ambient light trickling into the cocoon from the sky and blending with light emitted from LEDs. This allows for a rich interaction of varying forms of light, which is diffused through the skin of the cocoon.

The system architecture of the artwork allows for the tracking and displaying of several behaviours. These parameters are encoded into lighting patterns that suggest the collective mood of participants. The sentiments are encoded in different colours and movement. Colour gradients, velocity and movement are represented through patterns. Over time, the patterns become recognisable as the overriding sentiment of the evening.

Sentiment Cocoon is yet another example of the increasing proliferation of media–architectural interfaces mediating architecture with human behaviour. These social applications will ultimately lead to responsive, adaptable and clever buildings that serve human wellbeing.

Moritz co-created Sentiment Cocoon with lighting designer, Konstantinos Mavromichalis and collaborated with Arup, Nathan Whitford and Achim Meyer.

Sentiment Cocoon will be displayed at the Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney.