In Prague’s historical center lies a club that’s been there for over a century.
Going one floor down, however, you will find yourself somewhere quite contemporary.
This is because, in early 2019, the space has undergone a complete overhaul.
Dan Merta and Cyril Nešleha of MDMA architects have won the client’s heart with their minimalistic proposal where they intended to shape the space through precision-controlled lights.
To realize this vision, I’ve teamed up with Marek Šilpoch and Kryštof Krupanský, creating custom wall-embedded LED fixtures fitted to the constraints of the historical underground environment.
During this time, I began the work on Schéma. With the aim of enabling a wide variety of generative visuals based on two main principles – 3D spatial relations and individual lights as live programmable objects.
Combined with audio reactivity, this turned out to be a fun and productive approach to creating content for these digital LEDs.
For simplicity, the underlying system is hidden during normal use.
Several dynamic scenes and key parameters can be accessed via a MIDI controller. Deeper adjustments can be done remotely.
Geek Board
- 2 custom Teensy 3.2 + OctoWS boxes control ~6k LEDs through signal extenders
- Each wall embedded light has around 120 WS2813 pixels
- Some spatial animations are outsourced to the GPU,
using a custom vvvv beta + InstanceNoodles patch - A total of fifteen 200W/5V PSUs are powering the installation
Additional Credits
Metal works
eisen.cz
Photography
Vašek Novák