Vertex, 2026
Overview
For my master's thesis at FH Joanneum, I designed and built Vertex, a walk-in light installation made of 21 custom LED stands arranged in a 3.7m ring. Visitors stand inside the circle, fully surrounded by light on every side.
The project investigates whether motion design principles — tempo, rhythm, path shape — that are normally studied on screens still produce the same emotional effect once the viewer's body is inside the movement instead of watching it from outside. To test this, I ran a user study with 22 participants, each experiencing individually varied light and motion parameters, followed by a six-phase sequence that escalates from calm to full panic and back to exhaustion.
Process
Vertex is built from a design framework linking motion parameters like tempo, rhythm, path shape, colour and intensity to specific emotional effects. The full layout was planned in Blender before any physical build began.
All 21 stands were built by hand from 40x40mm spruce timber, with custom 3D printed mounting clips connecting the LED bars to each frame. Animations were produced in After Effects, mapped individually onto all 21 bars and driven live via DMX. A 22 person user study tested the framework's parameters on real visitors before the final sequence was built.
Final Sequence
The finished installation runs a single three-minute sequence, not a loop. It moves through six emotional phases — calm, rising unease, an attempt at regulation, full panic, decay, and exhaustion — using only tempo, rhythm, path shape, colour, and intensity to build and release tension. There are no characters, no narration, no symbols: the entire emotional arc is carried by how the light moves and changes around the visitor's body.
The sequence deliberately avoids returning to its starting point. The final "exhaustion" state is calmer than the panic that precedes it, but it isn't the same as the opening calm — a small, lingering irregularity in the rhythm keeps it from fully resolving. That was the intended experience: not an installation that calms you back down, but one that shows what it feels like on the other side of a spike in tension.
For the full 360° experience — drag to look around — watch it on YouTube via the link above.
