let passersby bring artwork to life with their iPhones
Created by visual artist Axel Morgenthaler for the facade of the new Society for Arts and Technology (SAT) building on Saint-Laurent Boulevard in Montréal, Pixiness is a large-scale interactive lighting and digital media artwork with which passersby can interact. Unlike any other artwork in the world, this installation of intelligent lights combines architectural art, lighting design, and interactivity. Like a giant shutter draping the front of the building, Pixiness is an 18-metre wide by 3.6-metre high technological installation made up of twelve motorized prisms displaying a mirrored surface on one side and a luminous interface of giant pixels on the other. At nightfall, this ensemble of LED lights, using a 960-pixel matrix, creates reflections of the external environment or produces layers of realistic, low-resolution, light-based images. And anyone with an iPhone who is nearby the artwork can interact with it and bring it to life by going to pixiness.org with their smart phone! The design and production of Pixiness required two years of research and development in Québec. The installation is part of the Luminous Pathway in the Quartier des spectacles.
