Inside / Out

Nine buildings in downtown Memphis were integrated with a system that sampled the activity levels from the inside of the buildings and transferred it to the roofs to control a dynamic lighting display. ‘Inside / Out’ brought the information of movement and energy within buildings and made them visible, so as people walked around the South Main gallery district of Memphis they were able to see all the building nodes and the activity inside them from far away.

Each building node of ‘Inside / Out’ used a laser diode system to track the amount of people entering and exiting the space, and then used this variable to display the information on the rooftops. The rooftop system consisted of a microcontroller to interpret the data sent to it from below and solid state relays to control 16 bulbs diffused by blue pixel in a minimally designed display.

‘Inside / Out’ used architectural buildings as giant, living pixels. And by taking the information from inside these pixels to control the lighting outside, made it possible to create a living canvas over downtown Memphis whose active mesh and dynamic display represented the interaction between people and architecture.

Created during art residency at FedEx Institute of Technology and Lantana Projects in Memphis.