Cubes
“Emergent behavior is the phenomenon of how small, simple rules can expand into very sophisticated and interesting high-level behavior. A million tiny pieces of information can become one large picture.”
This I would like to combine with human interaction and light. This resulted in the following concept
The concept consist out of a cube which interacts with its surroundings following some simple rules:
- Each surface of the cube contains a light sensor.
- This sensor measures the light that comes to the particular cube surface.
- The amount of light that will fall at the sensor will determine how much light the opposite cube surface emits.
- If the sensor detects a lot of light the opposite surface will emit a small amount of light.
- If the sensor detects a little amount of light the opposite surface will emit a large amount of light.
- This simple rule is applicable to every of the six surfaces of the cube.
By making a cube that follows this rule you can create a cube that reacts to its surroundings. But this is not the most interesting part of the concept. The interesting part is what will happen if you place several or even hundreds of cubes in each others surroundings: not only will the cubes react to the movement of persons/ objects they will also react to each other.
In this way you create a certain emergent behavior with products. Every cube follows some simple rules, but when you place a lot of cubes together complex and dynamic light patterns will appear.
Some suggestions:
Build wall out of cubes,
When you build a wall out of cubes you can create wall which makes it able to see silhouettes of people and/or objects behind it. Not only you will see silhouettes, but they will be inversed: normally you would see a dark silhouette if a person is standing behind a semi-transparent wall, but with this concept you will create a silhouette of light.
Use them as a building block set,
You could use the blocks just like children would. For every thing you will make a different pattern will appear. Not only will every combination have a different output. It will also react in a unique way to every movement in its surroundings or changes of light.
Currently I’ve been able to construct one fully functional prototype and are looking for resources people which can help me realize a large amounts for quantitative prototyping.
