Hypar by Team Ignite

It is already a long time ago, but you for sure remember GLOW. In this edition of the Intermania, student team IGNITE presents itself and tell you all about what their student team is about and their experiences at GLOW. Text & Images: Amy Hendriks and Anne Hopstaken, members of Team IGNITE

We are team IGNITE, an interdisciplinary student team that works on interactive light installations. With 18 students from both Industrial Design and Built Environment, we started at the end of 2017 and have been working with lighting for over two years. All with the same goal in mind: showcasing Hypar at GLOW’s edition in 2019.

We first started our team with the ambition to create a large piece for GLOW in 2018. However, due to time and resource constraints, we later decided to use GLOW 2018 as an opportunity for testing our concept and the ways people could interact with the installation. We built Loop, a smaller, circular structure where people could affect the speed and color of the light through their movement. After GLOW’s edition in 2018, the time was there to work on our initial idea for the installation: Hypar. Hypar is a structure made

of a double-curved surface in two directions. This surface is made up of a modular cube system that we developed over the past two years. In and around Hypar, we wanted to create an active atmosphere of sound and light, to be seen by anyone around and inside the installation. Using interaction modules on opposite sides of Hypar, we wanted to represent a contrast between technology on one side and nature on the other. Once both collaborate seamlessly together, it is possible to create something magical by sending a powerful stream of energy. Hypar’s shape also represents these contrasting elements, by placing the metal cubes into an organic, dynamic shape.

During our first participation in GLOW 2018 we made an installation of 20 cubes, which are 0,5 meters in every direction. Since Hypar would consist of 160 cubes, there was a lot of work to be done in a year. To gain as much experience as we could, we tried to do a lot of the work ourselves, like drilling holes in the profiles of the cubes and making data cables. In the 5 months of manufacturing of the Hypar installation, we also had a lot of help from volunteers and workshops on the TU/e campus. Near the end of the project and closer to GLOW we decided to have weekly work evenings with our team to finish the project. Sometimes even more was needed, but we were all determined: Hypar needed to be finished and shine on GLOW 2019. When the days of build-up were finally there, the installation was ready to be built on the Market Square in the center of Eindhoven. Besides the rain, the cold, and some last-

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minute fixing of small details, the installation was up in 3 days. When the festival started it became clear that the work we had put in was all worth it. Many enthusiastic people closely listened to our story and it was a joy to see all the children that used our interaction modules to control the light in the installation. That and all the proud team members that were present around the installation every night to make sure that everything went according to plan made this edition of GLOW a great success. Nevertheless, there were some things to fix after the first couple of days of GLOW, especially when it started raining and we found that not all our electronics were as waterproofed as we had hoped. During the day hours of the festival, we practically became a part of the Market Square and worked until everything was up to our expectations. In the end, this was all worth it because the visitors of the festival were already interested in our installation even before it was opened. During some evenings, the visitors were already all around the installation as soon as we removed our first fence. At those moments, we realized that we made what we wanted: an interactive light installation that is interesting from all possible sides.

Now, the time is here for us to go back to our studies and find new students that can work on such an amazing project and develop all the corresponding skills. Within our team, there is room for gaining and applying knowledge in many different areas, such as electronics, interaction, software development and promotion. The new team will not only focus on GLOW, but also on other projects and competitions in the field of intelligent and interactive lighting. This team will be a long-term collaboration between students, the TU/e Intelligent Lighting Institute, various companies, GLOW and TU/e innovation Space, to create a platform where an interest in innovative lighting is a common goal. If you are interested in joining our team, we are always looking for new and motivated students!