Heartfelt

Commissioned by HP for Panorama Festival, Heartfelts created a magical experience where technology dissolved into pure human interaction. As the hardware integration specialist on this project, I worked alongside artist Ekene Ijeoma to develop the first functional prototype of an installation that would captivate over 120,000 attendees across three transformative days.

Concept and Experience

Heartfelts invited participants to navigate through a carefully designed "maze" of 32 illuminated poles, each waiting to respond to human touch. The core mechanic was rather simple: participants discovered they could use their own bodies as conductors, closing circuits between poles to trigger cascading light animations. What began as individual exploration quickly evolved into collaborative play, as groups of people worked together to illuminate the entire structure simultaneously.The festival setting amplified the experience, creating opportunities for participants to explore the dynamic relationships between their bodies, the pulsing music, the physical space, and the responsive light network.

Technical Implementation

The hardware integration presented unique challenges for a large-scale outdoor installation. Working closely with the development team, I helped design and implement:

• A robust 32-pole network capable of detecting human conductivity
• Weather-resistant circuitry suitable for multi-day festival conditions
• Responsive lighting systems that could create fluid animations across the array
• Reliable power distribution and signal communication between interconnected poles