Light & Optics Prototyping with Phaeno - Part One

I’m currently collaborating with Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg, Germany on a prototyping project centered on creating more tinkerable light and optics exhibits. For us, this means in part, developing or remixing existing exhibits to make them more open-ended, learner-centric, collaborative and to work in more familiar everyday materials. It’s still the early stages of the project but I wanted to share a few of the experiments that we’ve tried so far.

The first theme that we’re working on is a variation of the light island exhibit which has a beam of light a various materials that reflect or refract light like lenses, mirrors and prisms. One possible direction to take the exhibit is into a more artistic realm. I was inspired by the work of artists Stephen Knapp and Bashar Yurukoglu and put together a rough set of materials including mirrored cardstock, colored filters and cardboard bases.

This prototype opens up possibilities to use the beam of white light coming from a central place to create beautiful abstract light patterns. I’m interested to see how the emphasis on color and design might lead to more sophisticated scientific explorations.

Another possibility is playing with colored shadows made by combinations of red, green and blue flashlights. The traditional full-body experience built at the Exploratorium is a iconic science center exhibit and I’ve also seen smaller RBG light testing stations. I was interested to try how the addition of a slow spinning motor and everyday materials might offer new pathways for exploration. Again being inspired by artists, I was interested in how Oalafur Eliasson’s version of the classic exhibit used more than just the three primary colors of light to make a more surprising effect.

I’m curious to continue to explore this idea and to think about a set of colored lights that visitors could easily turn on and off to see how the different arrangements affect the shadow play.

A third idea that we’re exploring is subtractive color mixing where you can arrange cyan, magenta and yellow transparent material on a light table and make the primary colors of light. For this experiment I also brought in some extra familiar materials like metallic mesh and bubble wrap to add to the possibilities of creating abstract patterns with the pieces. I would also like to test out which shapes offer the most interesting possibilities for learners to create their own designs.

In addition to the color mixing on the flat light table surface, I was also curious to try the same colored filters projected on a white wall with a white flashlight. I rigged up a simple set up with wire bases and the flashlight on a flexible base. This also worked well and I think it could be interesting to have these two parrallel set-up next to each other.

Over the next weeks and months we’ll be continuing to prototype these ideas as well as a couple other starting points. There will be time to test the rough drafts with museum visitors and use their feedback to refine the designs. Stay tuned for the latest updates about this iterative exhibit development process.