Lumichairs

About This Project

Lumichairs is a project exploring gamification and play in furniture design. Lumichairs was initially commissioned by the Victoria & Albert Digital Programmes as part of Paperplayscapes, a participatory installation and educational workshop for the Elephant & Castle Mini Maker Faire 2014.

As a game, Lumichairs invites people to play with furniture, lights and music. We drew inspiration from the Music Chairs game, where people try to sit on a number of chairs at the end of a music round, which is always smaller than the number of the players. In our version, each seat has embedded electronics controlling a set of LED lights on the module surface. They are different to the ones assembled by the people in the respect that they are pre-programmed with an Arduino, pre-assembled and fixed in space. The black circle on the surface triggers a distinct game mode, creating a new game sequence in each session.

Two teams of three people compete for the last seat that remains lit on the hexagon plan. The winning team is the one whose member remains the last seated. Six different rounds are triggered randomly by the players through the seat switch. At each round music starts and when it stops the lighting turns off on one seat. Music plays through two custom made speakers with a tetrahedron housing, controlled by an MP3 shield attached to the Arduino.

Category
Furniture, Lighting
Tags
contemporary design, design, elephant&castle mini maker faire, foldable design, furniture, gamification, interactive furniture, interactive installation, LCC, lighting design, London College of Communication, luminaire, maker faire, origami, paperplayscapes, play, playfulness, playfurniture, playscapes, prototype, seating design, solids, V&A, V&A Digital Programmes