- Culture , Student
- 08/11/2024
IGNITE visualizes urban light pollution during GLOW
Starting tomorrow, student team IGNITE will be presenting its latest project – called “Skyway” – at the Eindhoven light festival GLOW. IGNITE’s interactive light installation visualizes how the increasing amount of artificial city light is gradually making the starry sky disappear.
Skyway will be on display behind the Beursgebouw, within walking distance of the TU/e campus, from Saturday, November 9 through Saturday, November 16. The light installation consists of two large, four-by-four-meter walls which form a passageway for visitors to walk through. “These walls are filled with all sorts of cutouts with lights shining through,” says IGNITE member Ezra de Graaf. “At the bottom, the cutouts are shaped like buildings and at the top, they resemble stars.”
Light pollution
It was a conscious decision to use these particular shapes. “When you walk through the city at night, you’re always surrounded by so many lights. Sometimes, there are so many that you can no longer see the stars in the sky,” says De Graaf. This phenomenon is known as light pollution, a common occurrence in the densely built-up Netherlands.
Stars are used as a measure to test the degree of light pollution. The fewer stars visible on a clear night, the greater the light pollution. That is why IGNITE chose to design the cutouts in their installation in the shape of buildings at the bottom, and stars at the top. “It makes you feel like you’re in a bustling city.” When visitors stand in front of the wall, the lights respond to it with an interactive light show. “The lights behind the stars flicker very gently and calmly and those behind the buildings flicker very brightly and intensely, to highlight the contrast,” she explains.
“With Skyway, we invite everyone to reflect on how modern life and urbanization are obscuring our view of the universe. We hope this will get people to see light from a new perspective.”
Engines as inspiration
The idea to fill the walls with cutouts of various shapes came from an unexpected source. “Our team is based in the Momentum building, where many car teams are also working on their projects. Because of this, there are always random car materials lying around,” says de Graaf, laughing.
“One day, one of our team members found a piece of an engine, made from a very shiny material with a hexagon cutout in it. When we shone light through it, we noticed that the combination of this material and the cutout creates a beautiful reflection. We used that as the basis for our final installation.”
3D-printing 250 parts
A considerable amount of time was invested to fill the entirety of the two four-by-four-meter walls with different shapes. “We had to 3D-print no fewer than 250 molds in total, which took a long time. And of course, we had to create the panels for the walls, incorporate all the lights, do the testing, and so on.”
And so, in order to get everything finished on time, the team called in some helping hands. “Especially in the final phase, we reached out to former IGNITE members and people from outside our project team to help us out.” And this paid off, because everything came together in the end and Skyway is now ready to be admired.
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