Case study · Interactive installation · City of Cambridge
The Portal of Positive Energy
Walk through, and a 200-year-old oak answers in light.
Step into the Portal of Positive Energy and your presence wakes the ancient oak in the Cambridge Sculpture Garden. Movement — any movement — nourishes the tree, prompting it to answer in radiant pulses of light and sound.
The piece was built for Unsilent Night, and it borrows that event’s central idea: a work of art that only exists because people showed up and moved through it together. There is no correct way to activate it. A child spinning, someone rolling through in a wheelchair, two friends hugging in the cold — the sensors read all of it the same way, and the oak lights up either way.
How it works
Pass through the portal
A tubular structure roughly five feet wide and seven feet tall stands open in the sculpture garden, inviting you to walk through rather than watch.
Move however you move
Motion sensors read the gesture — dancing, walking, rolling, spinning, hugging, clapping, swaying. Every kind of movement counts.
The oak responds
Your motion drives a laser projection up to thirty feet into the oak's branches, with a soundscape inspired by Phil Kline's Unsilent Night.
Credits
- Partner — City of Cambridge
- Inspired by — Phil Kline's Unsilent Night
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