Uwe Rieger, Yinan Liu, Tharindu Kaluarachchi, Amit Barde, Huidong Bai, Alaeddin Nassani, Suranga Nanayakkara, Mark Nathan Billinghurst: LightSense – Long Distance

Artist(s):

Title:

LightSense - Long Distance

Exhibition:

SIGGRAPH Asia 2023: Art Gallery: In Unruly Times

Artist Statement:

‘LightSense – Long Distance’ explores remote interaction with ar- chitectural space. It is a virtual extension of the project ’LightSense,’ which is currently presented at the exhibition ‘Cyber Physical: Ar- chitecture in Real Time’ at EPFL Pavilions in Switzerland. Using numerous VR headsets, the setup at the Art Gallery at SIGGRAPH Asia establishes a direct connection between both exhibition sites in Sydney and Lausanne.
’LightSense’ at EPFL Pavilions is an immersive installation that allows the audience to engage in intimate interaction with a living architectural body. It consists of a 12-meter-long construction that combines a lightweight structure with projected 3D holographic an- imations. At its core sits a neural network, which has been trained on sixty thousand poems. This allows the structure to engage, lead, and sustain conversations with the visitor. Its responses are truly as- sociative, unpredictable, meaningful, magical, and deeply emotional. Analysing the emotional tenor of the conversation,
’LightSense’ can transform into a series of hybrid architectural volumes, immersing the visitors in Pavilions of Love, Anger, Curiosity, and Joy. ‘LightSense’s‘ physical construction is linked to a digital twin. Movement, holographic animations, sound, and text responses are controlled by the cloud-based AI system. This combination creates a location-independent cyber-physical system. As such, the ’Long Distance’ version, which premiered at SIGGRAPH Asia, enables the visitors in Sydney to directly engage with the physical setup in Lausanne. Using VR headsets with a new 360-degree 4K live streaming system, the visitors find themselves teleported to face ’LightSense’, able to engage in a direct conversation with the structure on-site.
‘LightSense – Long Distance’ leaves behind the notion of ar- chitecture being a place-bound and static environment. Instead, it points toward the next generation of responsive buildings that transcend space, are capable of dynamic behaviour, and able to accompany their visitors as creative partners.