MAA02 MRAC02 23/24 Interaction & Prototyping

Photo Credit: IAAC LLUM Installation, 2023

Context

The Llum BCN festival is organised by the Barcelona Institute of Culture (ICUB). It  takes place during the month of February to coincide with the Festival de Santa Eulalia. 

Llum BCN is a festival of lights. For three nights a part of the city is selected as the backdrop for light installations by professionals and academic institutions. The year 2024 marks the 13th edition of Llum BCN and the 10th participation of IAAC: 

• 2014: Data Net
• 2015: Pluja de Llum
• 2016: Llum Tafanera
• 2017: Brillem en la foscor
• 2018: Playball!
• 2019: Bosc Nocturn
• 2020: Eolica
• 2021: Lumina Foresta
• 2022: Aigua Invisible
• 2023: Re-generation

Location

Llum includes installations from professionals, universities and institutions. The locations for the event are selected and assigned by the ICUB (Institut de Cultura de Barcelona). Until 2017, Llum BCN took place in the Gotico neighbourhood of Barcelona. In 2018 the festival moved to Poblenou district: a change of location, which created a new challenge that brought new strategies of the treatment of light and space. The neighbourhood of Poblenou is in continuous change. Industrial heritage, new architecture, urban art, chimneys, granes, artists and technology, cohabitate and turn the city  into an open and urban architectural show.  

After two Covid editions where Parc del Centre de Poble Nou was hosting the event for healthy environment and regulatory reasons, Llum was back to the streets of Poblenou.

The announcement of this year’s new location will be shared on the first day of the seminar.

Description

The city of Barcelona and Llum Festival challenges Iaac to design an ephemeral light installation with the following theme:

“2024 large public, point of view of the public”

IAAC has always used the Llum BCN Festival as a platform for interaction research, particularly “massive interaction” and the study of a crowd of people interacting while understanding their role in the interactive system. This year we will extremely focus this research into interaction with the audience while practising Visual Programming, Physical Computing and welcoming other cutting age new technologies. 

This year IAAC is committed and ready for an AI REVOLUTION: for the first time in this festival our Llum proposal will be fully designed with AI. Llum will be a perfect scenario to test the limits of this disruptive technology, aiming to ally with the designer to improve the urban ecosystem. 

We also are committed to design an off-grid Llum installation and cut greenhouse gas emissions to as close to zero  (NET-ZERO).

Learning Objectives

At course completion the student will:

1. Develop a 1:1 interactive installation that has a capacity to engage people concurrently and trigger critical thinking.
2. Create content collectively while developed specifically by every researcher involved in the seminar.
3. Produce a professional installation by collaborating in well-defined groups.
4. Employ Visual Programming, Physical Computing, Computer Vision, and other technical strategies to achieve an interactive environment.
5. Challenge the student to be an activist against global warming and climate change.