Emotion

is a lighting concept that appeals to the human senses. Feelings of unexpectedness and impossibility are achieved as Emotion responds to touch and mimics living world behavior. This results in a prolonged personal attachment. Emotion is an exploration in the possibilities of shape memory materials.

Emotion moves like a living organism, creating meaning to the user.

The concept behind emotion was taken from observations I made of plants that exhibit a physical response to interaction. In this case, the mimosa plant closes its petals when touched.

I looked at the vast range of human emotions. Everybody reacts differently to stimulus, so I did not want to get too specific. Instead, I tried to focus on stimulating only positive emotions.

The movements of my light are based on living organisms. I used the same inspiration to generate the form.

Shape memory alloys have the ability to remember predefined arrangements in their molecular makeup. This is something that can be set and controlled in the lab. I can set a specific shape into a wire's "memory". I can then bend that wire into a different shape. Once the wire is heated to a specific temperature, it will return to the shape stored in its "memory".

In this video I have set a shape into the wire's "memory". Once I attach the wire, heat is transferred, triggering it to remember its shape.

Early concepts from my sketchbook.

Concepts taken from my sketchbook and transformed into computer models using Rhino software.

The design I decided on and some early physical modeling. The trick was getting all the proportions just right. If this light was too big, it felt like it was going to bite my head off. If it was too small, the mechanical components would not fit inside.

This is my first test of the mechanism that pulls the petals of the lamp.

This is a prototype of one of my ideas for "emotion". This version is a hanging pendant light. Because it is suspended in the air, this version activates when it detects motion, rather than touch. After a set period of time without detecting motion (which would be adjustable) it shuts itself off.