08 / Team · Interactive installation
Resonant Interweaving
Making social influence visible through magnetic interaction and realtime particles.
Resonant Interweaving asks how one person's action can influence a wider social field. In a three-person team, I co-developed the central concept and led the TouchDesigner visual system. I also contributed to spatial planning, material tests, fabrication and much of the on-site assembly and screen integration.
- Role
- Concept & Visual Interaction Designer
- Year
- 2024
- Team
- Three-person collaborative project
- Contribution
- Concept development, TouchDesigner system, spatial integration, fabrication and on-site build
- Format
- Room-scale interactive installation
Current outcome
The 2024 installation combined magnetic interaction, a levitating sphere, suspended rings, branching forms and realtime screen media. My particle systems created a consistent visual response across horizontal and vertical displays, while repeated material and assembly tests made the magnetic centre stable enough for exhibition.
01 / Frame the idea
Each physical element gave the social metaphor a visible role.
Early interviews and visual mapping explored how personal behaviour, relationships and social forces affect one another. We chose magnetic fields as the project's working metaphor: invisible forces become legible through attraction, disturbance and movement.
The branching tree represented the relationships and support structures that hold a society together. The levitating central sphere stood for a shared centre that appears stable while surrounding forces continue to act on it.
Small magnetic elements represented people, events and local pressures. Moving one element altered the field around it. The screens extended that idea into visible particles, making the wider disturbance easier to read across the room.
Tree
Connections, support and the structure around collective life.
Central sphere
A shared centre held in balance by surrounding forces.
Magnetic elements
People and events that can alter a local field.
Screens
A visible interpretation of influence moving through the system.
02 / Plan the spatial system
The spatial plan connected every element within one field.
Scale drawings and a 3D model helped the team position the tree, levitating sphere, touchpoints, rings and screens. Vertical displays extended the tree across the room, while the central platform created a clear point of interaction.
The plan also exposed practical constraints around sightlines, cable routes, screen orientation and the safe distance around the magnetic elements.
03 / Resolve the physical interaction
The metaphor depended on a magnetic centre that could remain stable in public use.
Early tests exposed a conflict between expression and reliability. Stronger attraction made the relationship visible, while the same force could pull the central sphere off balance. The hanging elements also changed as the installation scale and visitor distance changed.
We mapped the effective attraction range, strengthened the foam-board platform with a wooden enclosure, used a lighter foam sphere for the levitating centre and embedded magnets where the force could be controlled. Repeated full-scale tests set safer distances and gave the visual system a reliable physical state to respond to.
Challenge
Make magnetic influence visible while keeping the centre stable.
Test
Measure attraction range, weight, spacing, rotation and screen sightlines.
Resolution
Use a lighter sphere, embedded magnets, a reinforced base and full-scale calibration.
04 / Develop realtime visual behaviour
I translated the magnetic-field metaphor into particles that expand, fold and collide.
I built and iterated the realtime visual system in TouchDesigner. Noise, feedback, particle forces and colour mapping controlled the density and direction of each field. I developed several behaviours before selecting a blue–violet language that remained visible in the gallery.
A key challenge was carrying one visual language across screens with different dimensions and orientations. I separated the particle source, force controls, colour mapping and output crops, then tuned each display while keeping a shared palette and motion rhythm. The video below is shown at its original 16:9 ratio.
05 / Integrate and reflect
On-site assembly brought the physical and realtime systems into one composition.
During assembly, I took an active role in mounting screens, arranging branches and suspended elements, hiding cable routes, checking magnetic clearances and calibrating how the TouchDesigner outputs read from the visitor path. This whole-system work helped the screens feel part of the installation.
The finished work made the metaphor legible through three layers: a stable centre, surrounding forces and visible field changes. A future version would connect the physical magnetic input directly to TouchDesigner parameters, simplify cable management and document how visitors interpret the relationship between personal action and collective change.
