Published on: July 10, 2008

In october 2007 I had a lovely talk with a current hot-star of interactive art & design Jason Bruges in his studio in London. The talk was a pleasant and fast-paced walk through his projects, with Jason symultaniously clicking on his computer, drinking coffee and explaining his ideas and projects in a very graphical and descriptive way. Through his emotional and inspiring way of describing his projects, he somehow always makes you see the same beauty that he sees in his projects. This talk was definitely a fun and quick ride through the present state of interactive (lighting design) art.

Before working at Foster and partners he trained as an architect at Oxford Brookes University. His path towards interactive environments started with his collaboration with Imagination, where he worked as a senior interactive design consultant. In 2001 he formed Jason Bruges Studio, which is a practice that produces “a diverse range of work that includes interactive light sculptures, interactive environments, events and screenbased installations…”.

Would you say you work mostly with light?
Actually we don’t work only with light – we work with kinetic, we work with materials. For example the “Interactive DADO rail” we designed for a special needs school uses 3D sounds in the space, tactile feedback and light. It reacts to touch and the response is light, sound and vibration – visual, audio and tactile feedback. The children use it as a guidance system that can obviously also be an object to play with.

In general we are interested in all senses, so to say – we have projects where we play with wind and how can we make them interactive for example.

So interactivity is the feature that connects most of your projects?
Exactly. And regarding this interactivity, we are taking on board how people are exploring the building, how they are using the building, how the environment is conditioning the use of the building – all these things are taken into account when designing the interaction.

Is there anything that you focus on specifically at your projets?
Maybe the most important thing is how you interface your installation with architecture. For example what you embed your technology or installation in, what is the feel of it, it’s location, it’s spatiality what diffusors or materials you use (when you are working with light for example) and so on. Everything is important.

How do you manage with the ever-changing technology?
We definitely work with best we can, but technology is evolving so fast that there is always something new next month, so that we sort of freeze the technology at a specific time and say “we are working just with this at the moment”.

I imagine there has to be a lot of computer engineering, algorythm design etc. with your work
Yes, that’s true – but still we build a lot of things ourselves. However, when they go to a production site and are going to stay in a building for 20 years, we usually use external help.

What would be your ultimate goal regarding your work at this point?
To build a complete space – to build roofs, to build walls, to build entrances, to build atriums. Because what we are working with could be called “making spaces” or adding another layer of ephemerality.

Could you describe the project you did for the 100% design festival?
It is a project we did for Greenpeace. We used the new 100% dimmable version of compact fluorescents which means that they dim down to 3% and they fire up at 3% too. We got the first 500 of the production line. We had an idea of making a raised garden – classical british ornamental flower garden, if you want – with lamps serving as a metaphor for plants. The interaction design supported it by dimming down the lamps when you are not near and lighting them up when you are. It’s like planting flowers: they bloom when you are near and die when you are away.

How often do you work on outdoor installations?
We are involved with landscapes a lot at the moment. We are currently working on a park in Fulham (Normand park) where we are building interactive luminaires. Each luminaire is site specific regarding the tree next to it, which means that the size, shape and form of the luminaire can match the tree and winds itself into it. Tree canopies are used as a texture maker and the light is interactive and reacts to the presence of people.

What would be the effect of this intervention?
It’s another layer of experience – it makes it richer. And it’s even safer, because if anyone is hiding in the park these things would have been triggered. It’s good from the security and from the energy point of view.

Since we already mentioned the energy point of view –was that the idea behind “wind to light” project?
Yeah – sort of. This project is really about “visualising the invisible” but it’s also taking a look at renewables as an aesthetic device rather than a bureacratic box-ticking exercise. There are so many regulations regarding renewables and sustainability, but what I was interested in, is whether we can use renewables as an aesthetic pallete. I mean people always want to decorate their environment, they always have and they always will. So why not do it in a very sustainable and renewable way? This installation is about putting it out there as a question, and people responded very well to it.

Where do you find your inspiration?
For me (pauses for a while)…just looking at wind or water…or across the field. Mostly very ephemeral things. Things that are dynamic, things that change – things that human beeings inherently enjoy. Flowers dancing around, the beauty of aurora borealis – you think of all these natural phenomena and people very very widely enjoy them and are amazed by them. It’s a bit like biomemetics – kind of copying from nature. Or better – taking Nature as an inspiration.

There are hundreds of interesting natural phenomena that would be quite fun to reproduce. Because in the end it’s about creating richness and texture in our environment where there is a lot of artificiality that doesn’t have to be as artificial as it is.

Thanks for your time, Jason.

Interview conducted by Mitja Prelovšek, MALD