Light

Just the other day we brought you the story of SUNLIGHT, an art project featuring a giant solar-powered projection of the sun. It was designed and is being installed by Brooklyn artist Adam Frank. Upon looking over Mr Frank’s website we found an interesting little projector-type thingy-ma-jig that you can set up right in your own home. It’s called REVEAL, and it simulates the sun-cast shadows of a window frame and swaying tree branches on your inside walls. Just the thing for that dingy basement office.  Read More

The basis of most 3D systems is to "trick" our eyes into believing that an image shown on a flat screen has three dimensions, but what if you could throw away the screen entirely! It sounds simply too far-fetched and impossible to choreograph, but that's exactly what researchers MIT's SENSEable City Lab and Aerospace Robotics and Embedded Systems Laboratory (ARES Lab) have created with Flyfire - a cloud of LED-carrying micro-helicopters controlled in synchrony to show unique animated light displays in three-dimensional space.  Read More

Many people want to do their bit to help save the planet, or to simply get fit, by riding a bike instead of using their vehicle. However, traveling on the road when the sun goes down can be off-putting for fear of not being seen by motorists. The Firefly light has been designed to address this concern by making them more visible. It uses a passive Infrared sensor to detect traffic approaching from behind the rider and projects light from flashing LEDs onto the back of the rider with varying intensity depending on the proximity of the traffic. The Firefly light is another shortlisted design submission in our ongoing series of the Australian Design Awards - James Dyson Award 2010.  Read More

In the age of green energy we are seeing interesting new developments that marry building materials with the capacity to harness renewable power sources. Building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) or concentrating PV technologies aren't new, but the ability to concentrate and maximize the capture of energy by tracking sunlight from dawn to dusk is. The Center for Architectural Science and Ecology CASE has unveiled a new Integrated Concentrating (IC) Dynamic Solar Facade which does just that - and it looks great!  Read More

A Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak is one more step closer to reality thanks to the work of a research team at the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF) in the Netherlands, which has successfully harnessed the magnetic field of light to develop meta-materials that can deflect light in every possible direction.  Read More

The Bulbdial Clock is an electronic take on our oldest way of telling time - the sundial. Instead of relying on shadows cast by the sun, this timepiece features three layers of colored LEDs that rotate around the clock face, casting shadows to represent the hour, minutes and seconds.  Read More

Scientists at the University of Adelaide, Australia, have put the squeeze on light. By discovering that light within optical fibers can be squeezed into much tighter spaces than was previously believed possible, the researchers at the University's Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing (IPAS) have claimed a breakthrough that could change the world's thinking on light’s capabilities, especially when it comes to its use in telecommunications, such as fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), computing and other light sources.  Read More

Scientists at the University of Tokyo have found a curious way to translate drawings and three-dimensional shapes into music. The prototype laser-based musical instrument known as scoreLight uses 3D tracking technology to generate real-time sounds based on the shapes and colors it encounters along the way, transforming doodling into a truly synthesized experience.  Read More

Spica is the brightest star in the constellation of Virgo and also the inspiration for this visual loudspeaker lamp system where sound vibrations force illuminated liquid within a transparent tube to dance to the music and makes the spectrum analyzer on my hi-fi appear somewhat dull by comparison.  Read More