Gold Performing Arts, Stage, Style and Scenery Design · 2023
Thousand Armed Lightsaber Artificial Intelligence
- A' Design Award 2023 Gold Winner in Performing Arts, Stage, Style and Scenery Design
- Awarded April 15, 2023
- CLIENT: Kaohsiung City Government
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 1,072,040
- Verification code F1D0F230D7 · Verify this award
About Thousand Armed Lightsaber Artificial Intelligence
Thousand Armed Lightsaber is a light and music show performed by twenty-four robotic arms. The six-axis arms move in time with music based on traditional Taiwanese war drum rhythms, combined with electronic sound and precise lighting. The show is fully automated and runs without staff on the stage. The performance area measures 2660 by 720 centimeters, with wiring, lighting and mechanical paths planned in advance. Movement accuracy is held within 0.008 centimeters. A total of 1,036 performances were presented over 28 days.
Kaohsiung City Government's Thousand Armed Lightsaber Artificial Intelligence emerges from the fertile intersection of robotic engineering, kinetic sculpture, and immersive theatrical design, representing a significant contribution to contemporary practices that employ industrial technology as expressive medium and spiritual metaphor. The installation's commanding bilateral arrangement evokes the iconographic tradition of multi-armed deities found across numerous cultural traditions, wherein multiplied limbs suggest omnipotence, protection, and the capacity to perform countless beneficent acts simultaneously. The sophisticated chromatic programming demonstrates mastery of color theory principles as the full spectral range harmonizes through careful calibration of hue, saturation, and luminous intensity, creating passages of remarkable visual music where adjacent colors sing in complementary and analogous relationships. Technical achievement manifests in the precise synchronization of robotic movement with lighting design, each articulated arm positioned to create radiating vectors that transform industrial machinery into choreographed visual poetry. The pyramidal light projections descending from above introduce architectural dimension while referencing sacred geometric forms associated with transcendence and celestial connection across diverse spiritual traditions. Ground-level reflections extend the chromatic experience into environmental immersion, surrounding potential viewers in luminous atmosphere that transforms passive observation into embodied participation. The work invites contemplation of the relationship between mechanical precision and spiritual aspiration, suggesting that technological advancement need not divorce humanity from wonder but might instead create new vocabularies for expressing timeless experiences of awe, beauty, and transcendence that have inspired artistic creation throughout human history.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- The show content: With the industrial technology AIoT and the planning and integration of the design team, the automated equipment of the technology factory was transformed into the world's first fantastical music and light show like a thousand-armed Avalokitesvara. Future Prospects: Through the precise use of AIoT to present art performances with humanistic connotations, an avant-garde, all-artificial intelligent art event was created under the planning of venues, styles, and music. With this as the starting point, more different art performances will be presented in the future.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The entire exhibition space is 5716cmx1851cm. To present the perfect performance of the Thousand-Armed Lightsaber, the exhibition area took up a space of 2660cmx720cm. In the long-striped stage, the design team preconfigured all the necessary wiring, lighting, mechanical route, and so on. With the proper spacing, the show was able to perform properly when all switches were activated.
- Tags
- AIoT, ASE Group, Thousand-Armed Lightsaber, Robotic arm, Light exhibition, Kaohsiung City Government, Taiwan Lantern Festival in Kaohsiung.
- Production Technology
- The six-axis robotic arm provided by the world's leading semiconductor packaging and test manufacturing service company, Sunbeam Group, was matched with highly sophisticated and informative music. The music was arranged and written by a well-known producer in the industry, and the performance was of high quality both mechanically and musically. This project was based on the famous war drum music in Taiwan folk art and created a (light saber drumming) that combines technology, electric music, and traditional art, bringing the dynamics of machinery and the energy of the lightsaber to the utmost.
- Design Challenge
- The venue of the exhibition is a local lantern festival with the theme of (Light). The mega event gathered various artists and curators to create different interpretations of (light). The challenge of this exhibition was that the robotic arm was provided by the ASE Group, which means that the exhibition was curated based on the precision industry. Therefore, the exhibition required high standards of accuracy and the error rate can only be 0.008 cm, otherwise, the slightest error will affect the components and lead to defects or mission failure.
- Project Duration
- The project started in January 2021 and finished in January 2022 in Kaohsiung City.
- Operation Flow
- A total of 28 consecutive days of performances were planned, and with 37 in one day, a total of 1,036 performances were presented. The show was fully automated with no staff present, except for one day of maintenance due to a power failure. Practically speaking, the (actors) did not complain at all about being tired or having to take time off for sudden illness. In addition, each performance achieved a level of precision and perfection that was almost ideal for the original production.
- Research
- The design team with a forward-thinking balance between technology and humanity to create a magnificent performance of the (robotic arm). With precise lighting, movements, sounds, and color transformations, the design team achieved an unprecedented performance through the language of AI. As if a new possibility between mechanics and art emerged, the design team made the soft, rhythmic artistic dance present a brilliant performance mechanically and technologically with precise instructions and settings.
- Inspiration
- The work was derived from the rhythm and aesthetics of art performance, both dance and performance art, which coincides with the speed of the robotic arm. The theme took its inspiration from the lightsaber in the famous science fiction movie "Star Wars", which resulted in a thousand-handed lightsaber performance with the robotic arm as the main character.
- Image Credits
- Kaohsiung City Government
Colors of Thousand Armed Lightsaber Artificial Intelligence
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