
**Burning Man 2023**\
**Black Rock City, NV**

_in collaboration with [Josh Zubkoff](https://joshzubkoff.com/) and [Looking Up Arts](https://www.lookingup.art/)_

With its long spindly steel legs, Spider Trap stands towering, but not menacing. Spider Trap is constructed primarily of nine steel tube sections that are bolted together. The front six legs support the two parallel webs.

The top web contains over 6,000 LEDs that swirl in hypnotizing patterns. The surrealist scale of this piece invites participants to surrender to being “trapped” in the web, relaxing and spending a long moment to explore the art and just get lost in the moment.


Giant steel arachnid with LED web

Spider Trap

spider_trap


- **Burning Man 2022**
- **Priceless 2023 & 2024**
- **Decompression 2023**

_in collaboration with [Josh Zubkoff](https://joshzubkoff.com/) and [Looking Up Arts](https://www.lookingup.art/)_

Playfully shaped like its namesake, Ladybug is a multi-person interactive sculpture where standing participants control a light show for participants lying beneath. It is a round surface standing four feet high and six feet in diameter, covered in arcade buttons mimicking a ladybug's dots.

Since those pressing the buttons can't see the lights, they rely on responses from those watching underneath. This fosters communication and relationship between the groups, rewarding the button pushers above with feedback from the LED watchers below.


Playful interactive LED insect table

Ladybug

ladybug


**Scale AI Office Lobby**\
**San Francisco**

_in collaboration with [Keegan Olton](https://www.keeganolton.com/) and [Studio Annwn](https://www.studioannwn.com/)_

A chandelier floating over the lobby of the Scale AI office in San Francisco, designed to match the aesthetic of the company. The bars are shiny silver aluminum with acrylic diffuser boxes over custom rigid LED boards.

The chandelier is controllable via a small MIDI device, allowing the receptionist to modulate the patterns and colors of the sculpture.


Interactive LED chandelier

Scale

scale


**Dance Club**\
**Downtown Las Vegas**

_in collaboration with [Keegan Olton](https://www.keeganolton.com/) and [Studio Annwn](https://www.studioannwn.com/)_

An enormous custom-fabricated octopus sculpture lit by more than 5,000 LEDs.

The octopus limbs grow from a disco ball in the center and hover over the bar and dance floor of a club in Downtown Las Vegas.

The tentacles and bar lights share a common controller, allowing them to light up in sync. Custom light patterns are modulated in real time by the audio feed from the DJ.


Audio-reactive LED octopus

Discopus

discopus


**Burning Man 2019**\
**Black Rock City, NV**

_in collaboration with [Mingjing Huang](https://www.essenceengineering.com/), [Tracy Scott](https://github.com/tracyscott), Hike Danakian, [Cameron Nagai](https://www.instagram.com/realroygbiv), [Anna Sohee Lee](https://www.instagram.com/annaisaverage/), Andrew Newton, and many others_

The Temple is a unique piece of art at Burning Man, providing a vital service. It is a vessel where people can leave offerings and process intense emotion--often grief or loss, but also love and joy.

The Temple stands for one week, and then is burned with all the mementos and shrines inside.

Soma had the honour of implementing the software and leading the installation of the exterior lighting, which was designed by Mingjing Huang.


Architectural lighting

Temple of Direction

temple_of_direction


**Lacuna Lab : Activation**\
**Spektrum, Berlin**

_in collaboration with [Thomas Heidtmann](http://www.thomasheidtmann.de/) and [Jemma Woolmore](https://jemmawoolmore.com/)_

Tycho is an interactive object that mimics the shape and behaviour of the James Webb Space Telescope by capturing light with a sensor and transmitting its colour via LEDs to a mirrored hexagonal surface, where it modulates a projection sequence inspired by images of the birth and death of stars.

By creating a cycle of sensory input and output, the line between the observer and the observed blurs, and a question emerges: who is the true viewer?


Hanging LED and projection-mapped sculpture

Tycho

tycho


**Gray Area Creative Code Apprenticeship**\
**San Francisco**

A repurposed vintage gilded picture frame houses a matrix of LEDs behind acrylic diffusion. A camera provides an interactive feed that allows viewers to influence the display of the LEDs.

This sculpture was used as a platform for students of the Gray Area’s Creative Code Apprenticeship program to display their work. Soma was a teacher in this program, teaching Bay Area youth the fundamentals of programming as a medium for creative expression.


Interactive LED picture frame

Magic Mirror

magic_mirror


**Inter\{FACE\}**\
**Spektrum, Berlin**

Whisper something into the cloud and you will never get it back. Once you share it, it belongs to the cloud.

Today more than ever, people are fascinated with putting their data online and on to corporate servers without considering the repurcussions.

This is the idea being explored with Whispering Cloud, a sound-reactive array of 105 LEDs installed inside a cloud of dodecahedrons, with a microphone hanging down.

Whispering Cloud was the final project by Gabriel dos Santos at the [School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe](http://schoolofma.org/), for which Soma was technical advisor.


Audio-reactive geometric LED cloud

Whispering Cloud

whispering_cloud


**The IT Show**\
**Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin**

"Augenlicht" is an archaic German word for eyesight, literally "eye light". Obviously the eye does not emit actual rays of light, yet the act of visual perception--particularly of shape and colour--is more than a passive, mechanical reaction to stimuli. Human sight consists of an interplay so physiologically and psychologically complex that one could say it is through the "eye's light" that the world is lit, grasped, and understood.

Viewers are invited to interact with the mirrored wall-hanging sculpture via an infrared hand sensor on a pedestal in front of the piece.


Interactive wall-mounted LED sculpture

Augenlicht

augenlicht


**Responsive Spaces**\
**Urban Spree, Berlin**

_in collaboration with [Orlagh O'Brien](https://orlaghobrien.com/)_

By monitoring an infrared LED in the cabinet door, we can detect how far open the door is. Using this information, we display a different "memory" scene each time the door is closed and reopened. The audio of each scene is also modulated by a lowpass filter controlled by the door.

The piece intends to evoke a sense of wonder: what memory will we see the next time the door is opened?


Soma Holiday

Projects