LightWave

Our city is the place where each one of us identifies and may relate to. A place that fully reveals its secrets when you get to have a walk. What if this space would give away more of its own mysteries, as any of us would get more intimate with someone ? What if our public areas were less shy towards wanderers, not afraid to show them more of her inwardness, her inner soul. Enlighten what is kept hidden to the disregarding eye. LightWave lets the sun caress walls he had never been able to reach. It enables pedestrians to discover what was shrouded in darkness. Obscurity naturally repels. Our project aims at empowering people with an instinctive desire to explore new locations they weren’t invited to before. A wavy sheet floating in the wind, reflecting the sunlight onto walls that had never been embraced by the warm sun. LightWave is made out of woven reused rescue covers hooked to the sunny façade at the entrance of narrow dark alleyways. The installation fights insecurity by bringing movement and sound through the wind blowing, and throwing sparks of light upon what used to be a shady surface. Shimmering into this dark side, the project brings life both through this evolving wave of light, and through women and men being attracted by this singular agitation. By doing so, the installation brings people together to share a space that wasn’t given the heed its potential could generate. Through different experiments we discovered the reflexion capability under broad daylight of these rescue covers. Moreover, at night, a piezoelectric system activated by the wind blowing the sheet powers a battery delivering current to a public light mimicking the reflection of the sun. The LightWave system sheds light on new places and opens new territories, it brings people together in a true enlightenment. This conceptual project uses wind’s swift movements to generate electricity with the piezoelectric method. The installation can take place on any exposed vertical surface as its light weight does not require complex mounting structure. The layer of piezoelectric sensors made of small blades installed behind the moving fabric transforms the kinetic energy it receives from those oscillations into electrical energy that is stored in an on-site battery. This practice has already been implemented in experimental projects throughout the world with excellent results. We combined wind and solar light, essential beauty of nature : this is the soul of our project.