Spirit of Earth Outdoor Lighting

Press Kit

Unique Properties

This design aims to achieve more grassland lighting and richer visual experience with less energy, adhering to the concept of sustainable development.
This outdoor lighting uses a linear laser to sweep across the grassland in parallel and illuminate it, causing the entire grassland to shine with scattered green light spots. When in use, the light dots fluctuate up and down, as if the grass is dancing gracefully, like the spirit of earth.

Dimensions & Packaging

During the design process, we created product models of different sizes and screened them based on outdoor visual effects and interaction with lasers to obtain the best product size. After ergonomic testing, the product was selected in the following dimensions: 180 mm x 130 mm x 230 mm.
This size allows the product to have a sense of volume and presentation outdoors, and can blend with the surrounding green light spots to present a magnificent visual effect together.

Tags

Outdoor Lighting, Sustainable Design, Natural Beauty, Art Installations, Design for Impoverished Areas

Production Technology

The core structure of this product is a glass bottle with an LED screen and a laser irradiation device inside, which are respectively used to simulate the effect of sprites flying in the bottle and emit laser light to illuminate the grass. The laser irradiation device is fixed on a "dual track servo structure", so that the emitted laser can flexibly swing in both horizontal and vertical directions, allowing the light dots on the grass to fly up and down gracefully.

Design Challenge

The difficulties in project mainly focus on the dynamic effects of lasers, as we hope that the light spots on the grass should look like the spirits of earth are dancing dynamically and naturally. The light effect of the LED screen simulating the sprites flying around in the jar also needs to be coordinated with the dynamic light spots on the grass to present the visual scene collectively. After multiple adjustments to the programming, the overall lighting has achieved a unified visual effect.

Project Duration

The project started in July 2022 and finished in April 2023 in Guangzhou, China, and was exhibited in the Art Museum of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in June 2023.

Operation Flow

This product uses a linear laser to sweep across the grass in parallel, causing the entire grassland to shine with scattered green light spots. When in use, open the lid of bottle to turn on the product. The bottle would slowly lights up with a green light, as if the spirits are curiously pouring into the jar and flying in it. Then, as the light dots gushed out of the jar, the laser began to sweep across the grass, emitting light spots on the grass, as if the grass is dancing gracefully.

According to the assessment by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC 60825-1), Class 1 lasers, like the one utilized in this design, are considered safe under all conditions and pose no harm to living beings' eyes or bodies and the ecosystem.

Research

In the early stages of design, by consulting academic papers related to camping economy and rural construction, and conducting investigations in landscape and rural areas, we found that the utilization rate of grassland at night is low, which is a waste of land resources. At present, China is developing the economy of rural areas through tourism. We conducted experiments in "Nanting Village" in Guangzhou, using the existing grassland for light show and improved the economy of the village by 20%.

Inspiration

During an outdoor building construction, we observed that when a laser from gradienter sweeps across the grass, it can create a magnificent visual spectacle. The linear laser will penetrate through the grass leaves, illuminating the entire grassland, producing scattered light dots, like a large area of fireflies. We hope to use this stunning effect to design an outdoor lighting product and apply it to rural places, in order to drive the tourism and economic development of impoverished areas.

Image Credits

Image #1: Photographer Qian Kai, Spirit of Earth, 2023.
Image #2: Photographer Qian Kai, Spirit of Earth, 2023.
Image #3: Photographer Qian Kai, Spirit of Earth, 2023.
Image #4: Photographer Qian Kai, Spirit of Earth, 2023.
Image #5: Photographer Qian Kai, Spirit of Earth, 2023.

Patents

Copyrights belong to Jingyi Miao, 2023.

Colors of Spirit of Earth Outdoor Lighting