Qualia

A New Kind of Interactive Experience

Qualia is a room-scale sound and light interactive sculpture

For the past two years, Brian McGaw and I have been exploring a new kind of interactive experience – named Qualia. It attempts to empower participants with the ability to become the environment but also presents a narrative for the participants to explore as a group.

We have created a room-scale sound and light sculpture that culminates in a glowing door.  The glowing door can see the group before it, and it reflects their movements throughout the room.

Key actions trigger changes in the environment, including the opening of the door.  What’s inside is a mystery you’ll have to discover yourself.

We’ll be sharing more about this project soon.

Resin Diffuser

The light sculpture consists of numerous controllable LEDs and uses resin material as a diffuser. By using a combination of clear resin, white alcohol ink, and light sources we were able to achieve an unworldly, mystical and dreamy look to this glowing portal.

Alcohol Ink Experiments

To achieve this look we experimented a lot by mixing the high-gloss epoxy resin and various alcohol inks.

For the final look. we limited our color palette to greyscale and instead chose to rely on the color white’s ability to reflect light.

Alcohol Ink
Alcohol Ink