Fiat Lux

2008
In collaboration with Adrian Giddings and Charles Horn

Adrian, Charles and I had been playing around with light writing for awhile. This is a process where light is passed in front of a camera on a long exposure, enabling the user to “draw” with light in the resulting image. It’s a lot of fun. (For more about light writing, see this page.)

We wanted to see if we could write with light in real time, instead of doing it as stop motion animation. Fiat Lux was born.

Fiat Lux uses a program that Charles wrote in Processing, as well as a video camera and a projector. The camera captures the light writing and feeds it to a laptop where the program is running. The program keeps the most luminous parts of an image on a transparent top layer of video, which is cleared via a trigger. The output is projected. The resulting environment is one in which the performer can draw with light, and then interact with their drawings – walk around them, add to them, all in real time.

Fiat Lux debuted at the V for Venice festival in Venice, Italy, where it was used to generate visuals for DJs. Shortly after it was shown at The Big Draw in London, where it was used as an exploratory, interactive environment for adults and children.