At first they appear motionless, just a shining blue diamond suspended dozens of feet above the audience members’ heads. But give it a minute and you’ll begin to notice they move. Synchronized with music, the lights begin to undulate through space like a neon murmuring. Only instead of birds doing their dance, the motorized LEDs flicker and sway.

 

This massive lighting installation, called GRID, was made for the Festival des Lumieres and is the creation of Tetro, a French design and production consultancy and and Christopher Bauder, founder of Whitevoid. Together, with the help of composer Robert Henke, Bauder and Tetro transformed 50 floating triangles into an LED ballet.

 

Our fascination with large-scale lighting installations is inherent, says Bauder, who is known for his large-scale kinetic lighting events. “Moving objects and animated light immediately trigger the natural curiosity of humans,” he explains. GRID, then, is tapping into our basic desire for motion and light and enhancing that with mesmerizing soundscapes to create an immersive audio-visual installation. “All our works very much depend on advanced technology,” he continues. “But what we are trying to achieve with those complex machines are immediate and unreflected human emotions.”