Habits Design Studio, a multidisciplinary design and innovation company, on the occasion of the Fuorisalone event – Milan 6-12 June – presents at Superstudio Più, Via Tortona 27, a circle-shaped interaction design installation, which explores the relationship between movement, light and sound. It’s a physical and digital interaction between the human body and light, made spectacular through the art of Kataklò Athletic Dance Theatre Italian dance company.
“Through this research, we show some aspects of the most advanced knowledge that we develop inside the studio. The designers who wrote the Italian design history studied the manufacturing processes, experimented with pipes and sheet metal, they explored injection moulding. They built incredible wooden prototypes to better understand the shape, the dimensions, and the ergonomics. Alongside these methods, we now study the experience of the product. We learn to manage the digital layer that surrounds the product and puts it in relationship with the user”, state Innocenzo Rifino and Diego Rossi, founders of Habits Design Studio.
In the ancient and ritual shape of the circle the body that moves produces luminous and sonorous signs that give back a multisensory experience. Habits’ installation takes inspiration from land art pieces, drawing on the ancestral value of the circle as the boundary of space. The dancers from Kataklò and the visitors of Fuorisalone, dancing and moving near the ring, generate a scenography of light, colours and sounds, that involves the senses.
“The impact of this experimental project leads to the evolution of electronic products in which the interaction experience and the information exchange between product and user are decisive. At the studio we build prototypes that we define as “high fidelity” because they are very close to the reality of the digital and interactive experience that the user will have. Exploring dance, the gesture, the light, we build a humanistic relationship: a dialogue between the people and the product. With the knowledge deriving from this model, we can hypothesize a future of products with emotional response, in which light is distributed in the shape, changes with time and is sensitive to the contest”, conclude Rifino and Rossi.
A modular structure of 24 interconnected metal elements, which form a ring with a diameter of 4 meters, is equipped with 5400 LED RGB on a total length of 40 meters. The software-controlled system has a microprocessor connected with an infrared camera, which detects the movements inside the ring. It processes images and lights, creating a luminous scenography with unique colors and sounds.
Photo credits: Habits Design Studio
