Light Object

Light Object begins from the physical presence of light and the feelings that light can produce before they are translated into language.

A sudden spray of light can touch the body without intention. Its effect is optical, spatial and psychological at once. The work treats light with a direct and serious attention, allowing physical illumination to become atmosphere, pressure, softness, intensity and emotional state.

Within the work’s imagined world, light can move as a wave of fire, soften like breath, disperse like dust or gather into a luminous body. When moving forms meet, collide and transform, they become a light object.

The visual world of Light Object is generated through OpenGL-based real-time 3D rendering inside Max/MSP/Jitter.

The forms seen on screen are computed during the performance. Their geometry, movement, density, colour and luminous behaviour remain open to change as the system responds to sound and interaction. The visual field is therefore performed rather than simply displayed.

Real-time computer graphics become a compositional material. Programming determines how forms emerge, collide, fragment and reorganise, while musical time determines how those transformations accumulate into a structured audiovisual progression.

The real-time 3D visuals carry the same formal responsibility as sound: they develop through contrast, transition, pressure and release. Code, visual organisation and musical structure operate inside the same act of composition.

The work connects real-time graphics, electronic sound and physical stage lighting within one interactive structure.

Max/MSP/Jitter provides the visual and control environment. OpenGL renders the three-dimensional visual field in real time. Csound generates granular sound, while Art-Net carries control to the stage-lighting system. An iPhone provides a live interface through which video, sound and light can be shaped during the performance.

These elements are organised as one stage behaviour. A change in interaction can move across visual form, sonic texture and physical illumination, allowing the projected visuals and the actual light in the room to participate in the same transformation.

The audience encounters computation at several scales at once: within the generative visual field, within the sound and across the physical architecture of the stage.

Light Object places computer-generated 3D form directly inside live musical performance.

In 2012, the work brought OpenGL-based generative graphics, sound-responsive transformation, mobile interaction, granular synthesis and networked stage lighting into one authored event. The computer functions simultaneously as a visual instrument, a sound instrument and a stage-control system.

Computation therefore becomes visible as stage behaviour. It shapes what the audience sees, what it hears and how physical light occupies the room, while performers and conductor organise those transformations through musical time.

The work’s multimedia character comes from this integration: real-time visuals, sound and light share one temporal structure and one expressive trajectory.