Thermally Speaking

LeuWebb Projects with Mulvey & Banani Lighting Inc.

12. August 2020

Photo: Doublespace Photography (All photos courtesy of v2com)

Revealing our body heat in three-dimensional space through experiential illumination, "Thermally Speaking" used thermography and infrared measuring instruments to uncover the fields of energy of which we’re all apart.

Project: Thermally Speaking, 2019
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Client: City of Toronto, Nuit Blanche
Artists/designers: LeuWebb Projects with Mulvey & Banani Lighting Inc.

Project Manager: Stephen Kaye (Mulvey & Banani Lighting Inc.)
Design Team: Christine Leu, Alan Webb (LeuWebb Projects)

Collaborators Engineers: Paul Boken, Sepideh Nabaee, CityLightsTO
Lighting Designer: Mulvey & Banani Lighting Inc.

Photo: Doublespace Photography

The responsive installation transformed Toronto's Fort York Visitor Centre for Nuit Blanche 2019, providing a glimpse into a future of body temperature readings, creative data visualization and surveillance fields.

Photo: Doublespace Photography

Audiences were invited to move through, over and around the ramp of the Visitor Centre both as observers and subjects of observation, participants in dialogue with the phenomena around them. Thermal imaging cameras relayed and translated the heat energy of visitors into a shifting curtain of light, animating the channel glass facades of the existing building.

Photo: Doublespace Photography

Designed by LeuWebb Projects and produced in collaboration with Mulvey & Banani Lighting as part of their CITYLights Toronto initiative, the installation also provided an opportunity for technical development for students in the field of lighting design and architecture.