Interactive Beams of Light Examine Movements of the Human Body During Milan Design Week

All images by David Zanardi

Ergonomic design company Humanscale analyzes the structure of the human body to create health-conscious furniture that eases tension during long office hours. For this year’s Milan Design Week the company invited collaborator Todd Bracher to design an interactive installation that would speak to how our bodies operate in space. The piece, appropriately titled Bodies in Motion, mirrors the movements of its guests with 15 spotlights that swirl in tandem with users’ limbs.

The work is a reinterpretation of the original scientific method of motion perception developed by Swedish psychophysicist Gunnar Johansson in 1973. Johansson observed movements by placing lights on different points of actors’ bodies and then recording their movements in the dark so he could interpret their actions without distraction. Bodies in Motion uses a more complex system developed by Studio TheGreenEyl to bring the experiment into the 21st-century. The collaborative installation is open from 10 AM – 6 PM daily through April 14, 2019 at Salon del Mobile. (via dezeen)