Under My Umbrella at Vivid Sydney

Part of the “Vivid Sydney: Light, Music & Ideas” festival, Under My Umbrella invites you to dream and dance under a glowing canopy as it sways gently in the wind.”

Each XIM module has its own programming. During show hours, the XIMs are programmed to respond with a unique delay and flashing rate to create the impression that the umbrellas are flashing randomly. When visitors walk underneath the canopy of umbrellas, they trigger a more organized, sequential pattern of light, which times out to a fixed lighting level before timing out again to pseudo-random flashing. This involved programming the sensor state machine in the XIM to track time of day, occupancy, delay times and fade times, and time-out periods, transitioning in highly planned ways between the 4 basic behavioral states.

What Under My Umbrella demonstrates is the power of the XIM distributed intelligence architecture. There was no central controller or hub. No cumbersome DMX wiring. All of the programming is in the lights themselves, which act autonomously in response to the various independent inputs.

Under My Umbrella was created by the Beam Collective, which includes Bettina Easton of E-Lux, Colin Shum of Medland Metropolis Engineering, Grace Tham of HASSELL Studio, and Ales Vasenda of 3S Lighting, with help from Webster Chu of Xicato. It uses 50 XIM Gen4 modules in custom fixtures (the umbrellas), activated by scheduling, 4 motion sensors, and the unique programming features of the XIM.