Ottawa native Andrew O’Malley makes these beautiful animated light sculptures, featuring finely crafted cases, hand-built electronics, and custom programming to achieve, as he puts it, “entertaining behavior through a playful balance between rules and randomness.”
I’m fascinated by the idea that a simple set of rules let lose in a system can create vivid and unexpected results. In pursuing such rules and algorithms, I program patterns that are entirely orderly, completely random, and sometimes somewhere in between. The most intriguing and visually pleasing of these end up in my light boxes.
Shown above is #3 in his Electric Window series. There’s video here, showing it in action.
And here are two more from the same series: To left, #4, which he also makes using red LEDs, and to right, an “open enclosure” variant, which is also available with a smoked acrylic cover.
These are from Andrew’s Tunnel Vision series, which exploit the “barbershop mirror” effect to create the illusion of infinite regression in space.
Andrew has a formal background in electrical engineering and is a robot hobbyist. He also paints, does installation pieces, and, together with his wife Deborah, produces and DJs electronic music. You can read more about Andrew and his background on the Maker’s Market blog.
ADVERTISEMENT
