Soma Holiday

Soma Holiday is a freelance software engineer, LED artist, creative coder, and educator.

I also cook, dance, write, and occasionally refer to myself in third person.

I'm motivated by magic: the magic of a new ability learned, of a new skill exercised, of a new connection formed.

Drop me a line. Let's make magic.

Tycho

Interactive LED and projection-mapped sculpture

in collaboration with Thomas Heidtmann and Jemma Woolmore

Gallery Opening:
Lacuna Lab : Activation
Spektrum
Berlin
22 April 2016

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?

Augenlicht

Interactive LED sculpture

Gallery Opening:
The IT Show
Kunstquartier Bethanien
Berlin
5 December 2014

"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.

Storage Space

Interactive cabinet of memories

in collaboration with Orlagh O'Brien

Gallery Opening:
Responsive Space
Urban Spree
Berlin
25 July 2014

By monitoring two infrared LEDs 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. The audio of each scene is also modulated by the door, though this effect is not apparent in this silent footage.

The laptop controlling this piece was stolen from the gallery opening night, rendering the software itself a performance: it exists only in memory now.

Whispering Cloud

Sound reactive geometric LED cloud

Gallery Opening:
Inter{FACE}
Spektrum
Berlin
12 August 2015

An array of 105 LEDs installed inside a cloud of dodecahedrons, with a microphone hanging down.

Final project by Gabriel dos Santos at the School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe, for which I was technical advisor.