Weary of the media art scene’s many highly elaborate interactive installations, panGenerator, a crew from Poland, created Constellaction, a smart yet playful alternative to the stacks of hardware everyone else seems to require these days. Handy, three-dimensional tetrahedrons are the elements used to construct this array, one that’s so simple kids can master it immediately.

Communicating Light

The tiny, four-faceted figures react to sudden changes in lighting by glowing and making sounds. Plus, they’re quite communicative in that their illumination proves infectious to their neighbors. Thus, on a surface full of adjacent tetrahedrons, the illumination of a single unit triggers a light wave running across the whole field. In a dark space, all you need is a small flashlight to get the installation started.

Crew: Piotr Barszczewski, Krzysztof Cybulski, Krzysztof Goliński, Jakub Koźniewski (panGenerator / PL)

The project has been originally created for the Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw, Poland, for Przemiany Festival 2013.