The Petals
The Petals are an audio visualizer and immersive sculpture. In darkness, the oversized petals are arranged into a bloom. When activated, their translucent color changes in response to words, musical tempo, and key.
This short reel demonstrates how the Petals react across genres, from Intergalactic by the Beastie Boys to Talking Heads’ Life During Wartime. Each song utilizes a unique approach to visualize music with differing focuses on vocals, percussion, and chorus.
Music takes on another life with the installation’s scale and its lighting’s behavior. The fading in and out of light creates a presence of inhale and exhale. These Petals can breathe in unison or independently of one another in reflection of the song being played.
The Petals renew a sense of awe for songs you have heard countless times before. The opportunity to engage with music beyond the auditory, and also in a visual and physical way enriches the listening experience. You are no longer simply an audience to music, you are its visitor.
The full-size, working prototype of these Petals validates further exploration in repetition and scale. With unlimited resources, The Petals might translate well in a forest-like arrangement to immerse visitors even more fully.
“Well, how did I get here?”
The goal of this project was to create space to connect deeper with music. At the root of the idea is a deep admiration of music as a natural phenomenon. At its best, music has the power to possess anyone through intuitive dance.
In visualizing this power’s universality, I was reminded of some dancing silhouettes of the aughts. Both the Superbad opening credits and early iPod campaigns were jumping off points for my visualization.
In translating these ideas to physical space, I was drawn to sketches with more organic qualities to speak to music as a natural phenomenon. I knew that backlit petal-like panels could achieve this silhouette effect. I organized the petals into a circular forest around a central clearing. This dynamic arrangement creates progressive immersion as visitors move towards its center.
I built a scale model to simulate how a cluster of petals might interact with lighting set to music. Wax paper, a projector, and small plastic figure soon became a 6” tall bandstand of living petals. I had proven that the glowing effect would translate across a wide range of genres.
I moved on to construct the petals at full scale using affordable materials from the common hardware store. The first petal towered at 7' and was backlit by a painter’s light. The petal was constructed of wood and corrugated sheets of PVC.
Although a good start, this iteration made it clear that more structural components needed to be done away with so as not to not distract from the central lighting effect. The revised version removed the visible backplate and still supported its height so crossbeams are only needed for structural transport, but not display. Grouped in clusters, these have a much cleaner, standalone finish.
Special thanks to Joel Neely and Dad for consultation and support throughout this project.
