Ripples in Time
Ripples in Time is a human-scale spatial clock that renders the passing of time and movement through space as light and colour, presented at Lumière: The Art of Light at Ontario Place.
- Date
- January 2026 – March 2026
- Role
- Creative Technologist, AI/ML Engineer, Software Engineer & Collaborating Artist
- Tags
- Interactive Installation, Public Art, Computer Vision, Lighting, LEDs, Creative Coding, Generative Art
Ripples in Time is a human-scale spatial clock that renders the passing of time and movement through space as light and colour. A ring of pillars pulses gently to mark hours and minutes, while visitor movement becomes part of the interactive composition — the landscape and its inhabitants dancing together through changes in light.
The installation was presented as part of Lumière: The Art of Light at Trillium Park, Ontario Place, under the theme "Rhythms of Light: Motion, Sound, and Time" — one of 14 light installations by Ontario-based artists, on view nightly from 6pm to 11pm through March 27.
Concept
Change — not just duration — is the property the piece foregrounds. Rather than treating time as a uniform tick, Ripples in Time renders it as a spatial phenomenon: a slow pulse around a ring, modulated by who is in the space and how they move. The work asks visitors to feel time as something co-authored between the environment and themselves, where presence and motion ripple outward as light.
Technologies Used
- Addressable LED lighting and pixel mapping across the pillar ring
- Computer vision for visitor presence and movement tracking
- Creative coding for the time-driven and motion-responsive lighting compositions
- Custom software bridging the perception layer with the physical lighting hardware
Credits
- Artist Collective: Gathering
- Presented at Lumière: The Art of Light, Trillium Park, Ontario Place