Lighting Focus - Surreal moments

25 October 2023

Lighting Focus - Surreal moments

Sony and Japanese furniture brand Stellar Works collaborate on a conceptual project that uses lighting and audio visual technology to create surreal environments.

Edited By Jill Entwistle

LIGHT HAS many forms and manifestations, and infinite possibilities for interior spaces. Its role in digital technologies has mainly been evident in exterior applications, such as media facades, but those technologies are also increasingly being applied in interiors (see FX July/August).

The Sony and Stellar Works collaboration brings together traditional furniture-making techniques and melds them with interactive technology, combining lighting and audio-visual wizardry. Image Credit: Jonathan Hokklo

Sony and Japanese furniture brand Stellar Works have recently collaborated on a conceptual project – showcased earlier this year at NYCxDESIGN 2023 as ‘Staydream: a surreal reality’ – which combines the traditional craft techniques of the furniture maker with interactive technology. Seven distinct experience zones, effectively room sets, were themed with the idea of bringing a sense of the outdoors to an indoor setting.

‘We wanted to discover how technology, craft, entertainment and hospitality could seamlessly merge to a point where both virtual and physical experiences coexist,’ says Hirotaka Tako creative director and head of Sony’s Design Centre Europe.

A significant element was the partition inspired by Byobu, the traditional screens used in Japan. The upholstered room dividers have embedded screens and speakers and so can be used for showing light images or art, and for emitting ambient sounds.

Magic Slate #1 has a rural theme, featuring images of landscapes, real and fantasy, while Magic Slate #2 is interactive, responding to people’s movements and reflecting them through changing graffiti art patterns on its surface. Both are part of Sony’s Byobu Display concept. Beyond Wallpaper also used interactive techniques, combining Calico Wallpaper’s Escape Collection with a series of projections from Sony that respond to the occupants of the space and their movements. The moon featured in the projection is controlled by a coffee cup – if people walk while holding the mug, the moon will follow.

In the Mist, depicting a traditional teahouse setting, is an interactive glass screen displaying a misty mountain scene which reveals a new view in reaction to people’s movements. The scene disappears when people get close to it, leaving a crystal clear glass pane through which a physical display can be revealed, potentially technology that could be used in a retail environment.

Other displays such as Nature’s Chorus and Feast of Light combined Byobu Partitions with speakers and clusters of everyday pendant lights to simulate the weather outside through visual and audio effects – the sound of rain, for instance – and also react to viewers’ movements and sounds.

Finally Dreamscape, a kind of audio/visual escape pod, is some sort of nirvana for the couch potato. The Byobu Bed seamlessly integrates sound and projection elements into a Kvadrat fabric-covered, self-contained sleeping environment. This womb-like enclosure has an entertainment viewing space at its foot and sound system behind the occupant’s head. ‘When I did the first sketch of this one, I still couldn’t believe how it could be produced and engineered,’ says Tako, although the prototype was achieved in just four months.