Creativity is the link of many concepts that generate original designs that drives the life of the human being and surprises it. This is the case of Carlo Ratti’s “Pixel Free” project for Artemide, controlled by an ABB industrial robot. The artists of this project are:
Carlo Ratti, born in Torino, Italy in 1971, is an Italian architect, engineer, inventor, educator and activist, Director of Experiments at Boston MIT Sensing City.
Matthew Claudel designer, researcher and writer. He co-founded the designX program at MIT, where he is the Head of Civic Innovation. He studied architecture at Yale and earned a Master of Science in Urban Studies from MIT.
Artemide Italian lighting company, specializing in the manufacture of designed lighting, has won awards, including the Compasso d’Oro Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1995 and the European Design Award in 1997. In 2006 Artemide won two Best of The Design awards. Best Red dot for lamps designed by designer Neil Poulton and by architects Herzog & de Meuron. In 2013 Artemide won the IF Product Design Award for the Cata lamp designed by lighting designer Carlotta de Bevilacqua
Carlo Ratti Associati and Artemide teamed up to develop FREE PIXEL, a new system to control light point by point.
This energy efficient LED lighting system project can be used as independent discharge units, which can generate electricity and light. They are driven by a unique power magnetic mount, which can be moved by humans or by a programmed robotic arm developed by ABB to generate unlimited light patterns.
Carlo Ratti’s project uses an innovative screen in which the pixels change position. The image is made up of pixels, which will be used by robotic arms to draw different graphics, thus changing the size of the numbers and becoming repositioned light-emitting elements.
The robotic arm manipulates a stream of images by physically placing 1000 pixels on a panel that converts to random light patterns. Generating original and unpredictable results.
Artemide has developed a magnetic pixel, which is a high-efficiency LED that lights up when placed on a PCP panel made from graphite-coated conductors.
Giving the public the freedom to move light in the environment at a unique speed
The idea of the project was to explore the combination of industrial and art concepts, highlighting its versatility between robotic device and digital technology.
