Using light to capture and represent ambient noise: A typically unnoticed phenomenon, ambient noise is crucial to our interpretation of the world around us. Psychologically it gives us security and reassurance that everything is in order, and its absence creates a primal fear response that was vital to our ancestors’ survival in the presence of imminent danger. Illuminate is light installation that will shift the viewer’s attention to the subtle sounds we too often ignore in our world of sensory overload.

By customizing a program for an arduino board, connecting it to a microphone and the multicolored LED lights, we were able to assign the brightness and intensity of the lights to a range of sound decibles. This allows passerbys to engage with the installations forcing a silence in observation as the lights dim the louder the sound, until it reaches a decible threshold where the lights completely turn off for a few seconds as if to punish the observer for the interruption. Then rewarding them with the colorful lights when the volume returns to a low decible level.