Dynamo
Role
Software developer
Commisioned by
Francisco Lopez
Client
Daniel Canogar
An LED scuplture
Studio Daniel Canogar presents one of its most ambitious projects to date: Dynamo, a suspended artwork created for the atrium of the Spanish Pavilion at Expo Dubai 2020. Created in collaboration with the sound artist Francisco López, and produced In collaboration with the Spanish Agency for the Promotion of Cultural Projects, AC/E, the artwork is composed of sculptural screens that form three interlaced loops. Surrounding the artwork is a spiraling ramp that descends to the lower level of the atrium and allows the public to enjoy the artwork from multiple vantage points.
Audio-visual experience
Sound artist Francisco Lopez commissioned me the creation of an algorithmic system to drive his composition for Dynamo. The system translates sensor and video data from the sculpture into musical cues, and acts as an automatic mixer and trigger of sonic events.
Interactive response
The public can interact with the sculptural screens via an interactive system built into the ramp’s handrail: hands placed under the handrail’s sensors translate into animated sparks on the screens. The more the public activates the sensors, the more vibrant Dynamo’s visual and acoustic content becomes. Mimicking the workings of an electromagnetic dynamo, the artwork eventually collects enough energy to generate a thundering visual and acoustic experience that resonates through the atrium. This moment captures the intense roar of so many machines of the past echoing through our modern history, technologies that we behold with a mixture of fear and fascination. The ecstatic discharge is followed by a calmer phase evocative of the circulatory systems of living entities. This quieter mode gives way to a new cycle of gradual buildup, in a repeating process of “collect and release” that is so much part of energy systems both biological and technological.
Dynamo is a meditation on the circulatory nature of energy and the synchronization of biological and technological systems. It is also an invitation for us to imagine and participate in the dynamos that will energize our future.