Crossing Lights

2014. public space intervention. DIY circuitry
 

A lot of people find visible technical malfunctions  attractive and spectacular. Some even hack devices to get a "glitchy look". I was curios to explore how people perceive different levels and types of those malfunctions. My goal was to find the threshold separating common, random malfunction from something different, made on purpose.

So I decided to hack lights in the underground crossroad close to “Chistie Prudi” station in Moscow. The hack itself was adding a diy circuit with an IR sensor that would switch the light off for a second, when someone walks straight under it. I was hacking 1 lamp in a row each night during a week, step by step transforming a random blinking into something perceivably man-made. Then, in the daytime, I was observing how people perceive that intervention. Finally, there were 6 lamps in a row, each would blink when you are passing under.