Tetralume is a twelve minute light and sound performance that occurs on an eleven foot tetrahedron structure mapped with LED lighting choreographed to an original score that takes you on a journey through an eclectic electronic musical soundscape.

The biggest challenge we encountered while developing Tetralume was animating onto a 3D structure. Traditional animation systems are targeted towards a flat-screen. We iterated my ideas on mapping an animation created on a 2D screen to a 3D object. Touch Designer was a beneficial tool for creating animations and visualizing them in 3D. It also allowed us to pull in our custom audio track and sync the animations tightly to the music.

This was also quite a bit more LEDs than I'd ever worked with before. Powering 1200 LEDs allowed me to learn about more power supplies and proper wiring. Each LED takes approximately 35 mAh, which seems tiny until you multiply it by 1200 LEDs. We budgeted for a peak power of 90 watts and distributed the load between two Meanwell PSUs.

Other challenges included getting a high refresh rate out of the finicky WS2812 LEDs and providing good signal quality over long distances. People were impressed by the performance, but the experience and learning I took from it are what I appreciate most.

• 1200 RGB LEDs
• Redundant PSUs
• PixelPusher networked LED controller
• Touch Designer custom LED mapping and animations

Luminul Creative is a collaboration between Ben Guerrette and myself.