LuminArt

by Nooshin Mohtashami

LuminArt is a simple installation that consists of a painted canvas, a series of LEDs installed (and integrated) on the canvas, one light sensor and one microcontroller (Arduino BLE 33 Sense) with a built-in microphone to monitor the sounds around the canvas.

The canvas is activated when the room its in is dark (or the light sensor is covered). Once the canvas is activated (or is ON), the microphone of the microcontroller monitors for the sounds around the canvas and randomly lights up the LEDs on the canvas illuminating the different areas of the art.

The colours of the LEDs in each section of the canvas match the colour of the art where they are placed so when the LEDs are OFF, they blend in with the art and the canvas looks more or less like a regular painting.

Calm Technology Principles

This was created with minimum amount of technology to solve the problem of illuminating the canvas in the dark (Calm Technology Principle VII). It also requires minimal attention from the user for it to be activated (Calm Technology Principle I), if the room is dark and the user talks, sings or plays music or even if there are general sounds in the room, the technology starts turning on/off the lights, otherwise, it remains as a passive painting and disappears in the background, following social norms of being a painting (Calm Technology Principle VIII).

Videos:

LuminArt in action (54 seconds) // How LuminArt works (1.46 min)

Link to the Arduino code on Github

https://github.com/n00shinm/LuminArt

Circuit diagram