Animation
An original running figure, looping across the grid on its own. This is the kind of ambient motion the wall could run when nobody is standing in front of it.
We spend most of our lives being shaped by rooms we didn't choose, people we didn't expect, light we can't control.
To adapt is to accept that nothing about you is fixed for long. You are always being read and re-read by your surroundings, and reflected back a little differently each time. It happens plainly, without memory or intention, simply adapting to what is there, for as long as it is there.
Adapt is not a portrait. It is a record of a moment adjusting itself to another moment, over and over, none of them kept.
The physical idea is a wall covered in small cylinders, each cut at an angle and mirrored on the cut face. Every cylinder sits on its own motor and can rotate on its own. Turn enough of them at once and the wall starts to behave like a four colour display, built entirely out of moving mirrors and room light.
Nothing on this page drives real motors yet. Every demo below runs in software, using the same rules the physical wall would follow: a fixed grid of round units, four reflected colours, and one rotation state per unit. All four demos below run at the same resolution, 1,098 units, so they give an honest sense of what the wall can and cannot show.
1,098 units, arranged in the same triangular grid the physical wall would use. Start your camera to see your own face mirrored and reduced to four colours, the same way the wall would show a visitor standing in front of it.
The wall does not have to show a face. Since every unit only needs to know which of four colours to become, the same grid works as a small display for other kinds of content. Each example below uses the full 1,098 unit grid.
An original running figure, looping across the grid on its own. This is the kind of ambient motion the wall could run when nobody is standing in front of it.
The same grid drawing a single number, counting down from nine to zero. Each number uses its own pair of colours from the wall's palette.
Because the wall is really just a grid of pixels, it can run simple games too. Move left and right, and clear the formation of invaders above you.
A recorded walkthrough of the physical concept will go here once one exists.