
Breathing Trees photo credits: Athos99 M Bobillier / Adam Spinos
Switched on London, the capital’s festival of light running from February 7th to 14th and coinciding with ARC08 will include the ‘Breathing Trees 2’ project. This is a revival of a site-specific installation conceived by lighting artist Laurent Louyer of London-based Creatmosphere and first seen last winter as part of Geneva’s Festival Arbres Et Lumieres (Festival of Trees and Light).
Inspired by the resemblance of two beech trees to a pair of lungs, Laurent developed his design for the trees to appear through light and colour to be ‘breathing’, accompanied on site by a synchronised breathing soundscape.
In Geneva the trees were lit by 42 RGB LED fixtures supplied by Look4ideas, and controlled by a single-universe Pharos Lighting Playback Controller (LPC1) which managed the synchronising of the audio effect, as well as time-of-day, special occasion and astronomical triggers for the light show.

Breathing Trees photo credits: Athos99 M Bobillier / Adam Spinos
For the London installation, a pair of plane trees in Potter’s Field Park has been selected and will again be controlled by a Pharos LPC, lit with Anolis UK’s Arcline fixtures and will be breathing in and out from after sunset for the duration of the Switched on London festival.
Laurent chose to use Pharos again, glad of the both the triggering functionality and its reliability. He comments, “Pharos Designer software provides many tools to aid creativity, and there is great support from the Pharos team”.
Another Pharos LPC can be seen in action nearby, controlling the lighting for the Hay’s Wharf project – also part of the Switched on London festival. Pharos is exhibiting on stand M36 at ARC08, Business Design Centre, February 11th to 13th.
Tags: ARC Show, Astronomical Clock, LPC 1, Real Time