Ricardo O’Nascimento
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Responsive installation · 2012

Feather Tales II

A responsive field of feathers that gives wireless signals a soft, collective and slightly uncanny presence.

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Five large columns of white ostrich feathers distributed through the dark Sala de Columnas at LABoral
Feather Tales II occupies the Sala de Columnas as a distributed responsive environment.
Project typeArtwork · Installation / environment · Research · Collaboration
ThemesEmbodied & haptic interaction · Materials & making · Speculative & critical design
FormResponsive installation
Year2012
Scale200 reactive units / 1,000 feathers
ContextLABoral, Gijón

01 · Proposition

The network stirs the room

Feather Tales II reveals the electromagnetic activity of mobile phones, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth as an animated material environment.

Two hundred reactive units combine sensors, microprocessors and servo motors with movable feathers. Together, approximately one thousand white ostrich feathers occupy the Sala de Columnas at LABoral.

Signals that ordinarily pass through architecture without notice produce a secretive dialogue across the installation: local, momentary movements accumulate into a changing atmosphere.

A visitor making a phone call beside moving white ostrich feathers
Visitors activate the environment through the wireless signals produced by their own mobile devices.
Rows of custom green circuit boards and white sensor wires during construction
Custom sensor and servo boards were produced for the installation’s 200 reactive units.

02 · Experience

Signal becomes collective movement

  1. 01

    Detect

    Sensors register nearby mobile, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth activity.

  2. 02

    Translate

    Microprocessors convert signal events into commands for servo motors.

  3. 03

    Ripple

    Individual feathers move, producing an atmosphere across the larger field.

03 · Reflection

Soft matter meets invisible infrastructure

The work replaces the usual screen-based image of a network with a space that behaves around its visitors.

Feathers bring fragility, ornament and animal association into tension with computational sensing. Their movement makes wireless infrastructure legible without reducing it to a diagram or a data display.

200 units

A distributed system of sensing and actuation.

≈1,000 feathers

A material field responsive at architectural scale.

Awarded project

Selected through LABoral’s Projects Office call.

Credits & archive

Project record

Concept and design
Ebru Kurbak and Ricardo O’Nascimento
Commission and exhibition
LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre

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