Winners of the 2006 Student Lighting Competition

A record breaking 90 design students representing Barnard College, Cooper Union, New York School of Interior Design, Fashion Institute of Technology, New York University, Parsons School of Design, and Pratt Institute migrated to the Center for Architecture the morning of the competition with submissions in hand to set-up and display their illuminated objects. And for one night only the Center was transformed into a wonderland of light – the building glowed, sparkled and flashed with bounced, reflected, and captured light.

For the sixth year, the IESNYC invited design students to participate in a citywide competition on the study of light. Students were asked to construct a three-dimensional study on how light can reveal, create, or transform the unseen.
The competition allowed students to explore light as an art form, demonstrate light as a stimulus, and prove light is a valuable medium.

First Place

“Convergenze Parallele” by Ernesto Klar
Parsons The New School of Design, MFA Design and Technology
Christopher Kirwan, Instructor

"Convergenze Parallele" is an audiovisual installation in which airborne dust particles passing through a beam of light are tracked, visualized, and sonified in real-time by custom software system.   The installation reacts to both natural and artificial air movement, instructors in the exhibition space, prompting the viewere to interact by blowing air towards the light and to observe the amplified sound-image relationships.

The custom software system integrates computer vision and sound synthesis algorithms.  The personal computer running the software system uses a video camera to track the location of the individual dust particles.  This information is then translated into sound in real-time, mapping the dust particles data to synthesized sound particles.  The visualization projected on the wall consists of an image-processed view that reveals the particles trajectory.

"Convergenze Parallele" explores the poetic potential of revealing and transforming the imperceptible, in the attempt to, in the words of artist Georgers Vantongerloo, "see the invisible, or if you like, take a sounding on the incommensurable."

Second Place

"Light Creates Time" by Emil Klein
Pratt Institute, Sculpture

John Monti, Instructor

"Light Creates Time” shows how light can influence our measurement of time. Our eyes are the door to most of our ideas of the world, they create space and time. Our eyes would be nothing without light. Light creates memories. Memories create time.

Third Place

"The Face" by Chen Lin He
Fashion Institute of Technology, Interior Design Major

Randy Sabedra, Instructor

“The Face” consists of 2400 square paper pixels with 0–63 degree slope on their tops all aligned in one horizontal plane.  The tops with the greater angle will receive greater light; the tops with least angle will receive less light. Together the varying shades illustrate the illusion of a three dimensional face.
 

Honorable Mention

"Transformation of Yellow" by Kimberly Acosta
Fashion Institute of Technology, BA Interior Design

Randy Sabedra, Instructor

Honorable Mention

Ji-Hoon Chung
Pratt Institute, Industrial Design

Prof. Katrin Muller-Russo, Instructor

Two bright LEDs are not easy to be mixed, so I used acrylic tubes for the light mixing media. Outer hollow tube becomes a light transporting material. Inner solid tube becomes a light transporting and mixing material.