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[d]arc awards -

The Portal

project credits
Design: Foster + Partners
Engineering:  OneEightyOne
product used
Custom LED meshes
Custom Downlights
photographer
Andrea Seroni
CATEGORY
 Art & Culture 

[d]arc awards -

The Portal

project credits
Design: Foster + Partners
Engineering:  OneEightyOne
product
Custom LED meshes

Custom downlights

PHOTOGRAPHER

Andrea Seroni

CATEGORY
 Art & Culture 

About the Project

The story

The Portal is a living luminous canvas created in close collaboration with Foster + Partners.

Inspired by a famous McLuhan statement 'The Medium Is the Message', this installation transforms into a medium of its own, conveying a message through the use of digital light. The key of this art piece is in perception: our familiar visual codes are challenged by dimension, and our understanding of the image depends on the point of view.

The Portal is an immersive spatial installation exploring the relationship between light, perception, and artistic experience. Formed by a sequence of suspended fabric and LED mesh panels, precisely cut to allow passage, the structure creates a permeable architectural volume that visitors can physically move through.

THE
PROCESS

Volumetric canvas

The Portal invites the viewers to experience the shift in human perception as the multi-layered digital painting moves. The screens are 28 see-through DiGi meshes, which together compile a canvas of over 200,000 pixels, all individually addressed.   

Image movement

Light and projected media unfold across translucent surfaces, generating shifting spatial compositions that surround the viewer in a 360-degree environment. As imagery moves from layer to layer, depth becomes activated, not as illusion alone, but as lived spatial experience. 

Programming

The content was created using Touch Designer. The visuals were later combined with DMX values into a timeline, using the new functionalities of MadMapper 6, and sent to our DiGidot Technologies and NovaStar Technology.