Spider-bat Lamp

Spider-bat is an interactive light fixture that opens and closes in reaction to the amount of available sunlight. The project came out of an Advanced Model Making Workshop at Pratt, where we were given free reign to come up with a personal brief. We were really interested in working with light and arduino to create an interactive structure, and we decided on a lamp that reacts to the lack of sunlight, brightening and opening gradually with the setting sun. So far, we have focused on the skeletal structure of the lamp and how the arms open and close in synchronization with one another—taking inspiration from the movements of jellyfish and the wings of a bat. We've experimented with paper and various folding patterns for the panels that cover the space in between the arms. Also, we're now focusing on wiring and programming the movements with arduino.

Given more time we would like to develop the lamp to further emulate a living organism, by making it seem to breathe or feel agitated, for instance. It would be interesting to see how much further the features could be pushed and what the boundaries would be between an installation piece or a practical item.