Outrace
In 2010, The London Design Festival commissioned Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram to design the festival’s annual Trafalgar Square installation. KRAM/WEISSHAAR's response was OUTRACE, a project that allowed the general public to take control of eight industrial robots on loan from Audi's production line, and use them to write personal light messages to be viewed in situ at the iconic square, and online as video files.
The installation consisted of eight robots mounted on a large concrete platform with a powerful LED light source positioned at the tool head of each robotic arm. By logging onto www.outrace.org with a mobile device or a computer, a global web audience and visitors on location at Trafalgar Square could direct the path of the lights held by the robotic arms, which each created a letter tracing of the user's text message. Long-exposure cameras captured these interactive light paintings and relayed them to the project website and social media platforms to be shared.
OUTRACE was a popup factory: a temporary production facility for writing large-scale, three dimensional messages made from light.
Project website: www.outrace.org
On Facebook: facebook.com/outrace.installation