Light Night 2014 - A week and a half away.

Light Night is in progress, and the theme is D.H Lawrence and Alan Sillitoe; the former I'm not overly fond of. But that doesn't hinder my enthusiasm when I get to play with Arduino microcontrollers and expensive infrared cameras, as well as getting my learning curve on with programming via Processing.org. At least, that's how I hope it turns out with my involvement.

From the meeting we had today as to where things stood, however, I had a lot to catch up on and the most distinct focus of my involvement lied with my increasing use of the sound studio. Given that my familiarity is growing with the equipment and software in that basement, my critique of the current Light Night piece was sought in terms of incorporated sound. There is to be a set of passages from the works of the late Lawrence and Sillitoe incorporated as audio recordings, in which the volume increases based on how frequently it is interacted with. I'm presuming a lot based on how often people will walk on those steps anyway. Children will probably be more involved and will run up and down the steps even more. 

So, the idea is to have a recording of a male and female voice reading the same passages played out in a loop. In the meeting, it was discussed whether the male and female voices would be sequential, or layered on top of each other. I suggested both a separate recording of both and one together. Triggering the sounds would be a matter of increasing the volume. Basically, interaction = volume.

As it happens, I've volunteered to be the male voice as I fancied putting myself out of the comfortable zone of being a soft-spoken individual in general.

The steps, as I should point out, are located at the entrance of Nottingham Trent's Arkwright Building (as pictured below); a building that has preserved all of its Gothic features, despite the once-quiet Shakespeare Street becoming the scuttling hub of an international student body. 

The LED lights, as they stand, will be linked to the infrared camera which will determine where everyone steps. The current idea is for the spectators to leave a path wherever they've walked with multiple colours. And of course, the more steps they make will hopefully increase the volume of the recorded readings.

As far as I also know, this is for one night only now. Where initially I was of the understanding that it was on for a week. But anyway, here is the publication on Nottingham City Council's website. Second page down under the title: Magic Light.