Loops

A light installation during Ars Independent Festival in Katowice, PL, 09/2022.

At the Katowice train station, where a former timetable once stood, Jakub and I installed an animated drawing made from programmable LEDs. We used a steel mesh as the foundation and for the drawing grid.

Katowice Station is the most congested and densely connected railway junction in the country, with an extensive metropolitan network. In the installation, pixels moving along the tracks refer to trains running on these tangled routes, and also evoke the common lo-fi displays used for the train schedules.

As the tracks are curved, the texts lose and regain their readability along the way. The program then subtly shifts the tracks, revealing station names in different parts of the drawing with each new alignment.

The animation is coded using a generative approach, meaning the base factors responsible for the dynamics and content constantly change, resulting in a different composition each time.