LOUISE LESSEL

THE WAVE

The Wave is an interactive installation created by Vertigo, Denmark. In February 2018 I created the visuals for its return to Ofelia Beach during CPH Light Festival, matching the tunes of electronic musician Mikkel Meyer.

“The interactive installation, The Wave, consists of forty triangular, interactive, both glowing and sounding gates. It stands 3,6 metres tall and 80 metres long. The gates can respond to visitors’ movement sonically and visually. In this way visitors are part of the co-creation of the artistic experience. The Wave is a two-piece experience. Its physical form consists of its sculptural characteristic of the 40 triangular gates. It has a size making it possible for visitors to stroll through the installation. The second part of the installation is what gives it a truly mesmerising feel. The gates are each equipped with sensors, speakers, and 10 metres of LED strip controlled pixel-wise. This gives the audio/visual artist a lot of possibilities to create unique content, which can react to visitors movement.”
– Vertigo

The interactive chain:

Trigger sensors at the feet of each gate -> Max for sound control -> madMapper for visuals.

The sound is controlled in Max with additional triggers coming from the gate sensors, these change the sound and initiate events (mostly waves of sound that move down through each gate), the visuals and LED mapping was done in madMapper and received triggers via OSC from Max.

This exhibition of The Wave included three soundscapes creating three very different atmospheres. I designed the visuals to support these (the futuristic, the retro white noise, the meditation). The visuals were designed to interact with the sound as well as make the interactivity of the sensors more transparent for the users.