Heart of the Ocean
Initial lighting and controls design for a 2.5-meter sculpture whose color-changing LEDs read live ocean data.
Overview
Heart of the Ocean is the penultimate image in Jewel’s Matriclysm installation: a 2.5-meter form laced with LEDs. The light presents real-time ocean data in twelve-minute cycles. The same conditions become sound.
I came on for the first lighting and controls design — how the volume would be driven, how a data feed could become color, and what the architecture needed to be before the sculpture was locked.
The job
The piece had to hold mixed color through a long, organic volume and take a live feed without looking like a scoreboard. Controls needed to be simple enough to hand off and quiet enough for a public room.
The first pass set the lighting language and the control approach so the sculpture could be built, programmed, and shown. The finished work is Jewel’s.