ILLUMINUS Boston

ILLUMINUS Boston is a free annual nighttime light and sound festival that features projects at the intersection of art, design, technology, and science, turning Boston’s public spaces into an activated urban canvas. The festival has been held since 2014 and took place in early December in Boston’s Financial District. It featured 16 temporary art installations created using new media technologies, performances, and immersive experiences by artists from Boston.

Color Kinetics was involved in two of the sites in 2019:

100 Summer St – “Interlux”: This temporary installation by lighting designer Alex Furlan was in a public plaza, where trees were wrapped in fabric and the fabric was lit with Graze Powercore MX4, RGBW luminaires and using Pharos control. The trees overhead were lit using Burst Powercore, RGBW luminaires, creating a canopy of light. The lighting was controlled interactively by the public using the new Interact Light play phone app. Furlan commented, “Interact Light play is very simple to use, and it puts people in control of the lighting. Anyone can download the app, and play.”

125 Summer Street – “Summer Street Luminism”: The building façade was temporarily lit using projection lighting. The lighting designer was Andrew Hlynsky. For this site the Interact Light play phone app was used to connect with the lighting and allowed the public to interact and control the installation.

The interactive capabilities at both installations were made possible using the Light play interactive phone app, which is what makes these installations so unique. This new phone app by Signify is designed to connect to architectural lighting installations and transform them into interactive experiences by allowing visitors to take control of and “play” with lighting. The app, available for both iPhones and Android phones, also included a map with photos and descriptions of all the sites, as well as the capability to let visitors interact directly with some of the installations.

Visitors using Interact Light play can select a desired installation and a time to control the lighting. When their time slot becomes available, they can choose colors or pre-programmed dynamic shows to run on the site. Visitors can also share their experience through social media, all through the app. While users can interact with the lighting, the site administrator is always in full control of their site and can configure the app from a web-based dashboard. The configuration parameters include time and days of the week for availability of the app, the amount of time per interaction, and the allowable content. Light play uses Interact Landmark’s cloud-based scene management APIs to connect to the lighting control system.

Follow the link below for video of the installations in action:

Interact Light play app – Creates interactive architectural lighting