Design Challenge 1 : Net Work

posted by Jane Prophet


            

The proposed site for Net Work is about 15 meters off shore adjacent to the Pier. This site was chosen because it enables viewers to see the work from both the promenade, and also from the Pier itself. The work will look different from each of these locations, the grid formation of the floats and lights being more apparent from the Pier. Viewing from the promenade will emphasise the wave movement. Seeing the lights as a moving viewer, walking along, allows you to ‘line up’ the floats as you adjust your position, and provides a stronger sense of perspective as you look along the grid because you are closer to the surface of the water. Although it is envisaged as a predominantly night time piece, the use of bright fishing floats means that in the daytime Net Work retains an interesting form as the floats will constantly move, in a group, with the waves.

            

Net Work has two different behaviours that will be alternated in 10 minute phases from dusk until dawn. Phase 1 cycles through the colour spectrum for 10 minutes, with all the lights on the net displaying the same colour at any one time, and this colour changing gradually from red through orange to yellow before cycling through to green, blue, purple then back to red.

            

              

After 10 minutes this behaviour will change and switch to a seemingly more random pattern of lights. In Phase 2 each LED is controlled by a PC housed in the Pier. The PC will send signals to the net of lights causing them to behave according to a cellular automata computer program. Cellular automata are simplified mathematical models of spatial interactions, in which sites or cells on a landscape are assigned a particular state, which then changes stepwise according to specific rules conditioned on the states of neighbouring cells.

            

            


In Net Work each float with its embedded LEDs is treated as a cell and together they form a 2D landscape. When the program runs the cells have one of eight possible states, each illustrated by the LED being a specific colour. The cells change behaviour and colour, switching between the eight colours, depending on the state of their neighbouring cells.