Anyone who has bought “white” LED devices knows that the light is not quite white. Michael Bowers, a graduate student at Vanderbilt University, has discovered an alternative method of producing white LEDs with a broad spectrum while remaining cool to the touch. This discovery will certainly make its way to architectural lighting and large scale applications as LED production costs drop. Bowers’ method also indicates possibilities to provide illumination through chemical processes in a luminescent paint to transform any surface into an light source.

via Exploration | Treehugger | Worldchanging

James Clar’s latest generation 3D Display Cube is a hand-made LED display matrix of 1000 white LEDs. The matrix incorporates software developed by Josh Nimoy to display Photoshop and Aftereffects files as well as 3D animations and a 3D Pong game. [video] [shop]

via MoCo Loco

Performance Relighting and Reflectance Transformation with Time-Multiplexed Illumination is new a technique that allows lighting and reflectance of the captured subject to be dramatically modified in post-production to reconstruct different lighting environments or stylize the subjects lighting and reflectance. The method uses a high-speed video camera and a spherical array of LED light sources to create 152 lighting directions captured every 24th of a second. [video] [paper]

Lightspace’s floor/wall LED tile system reacts to proximity, touch, and sound, bringing interactive surfaces out of galleries and into commercial applications. Their website doesn’t have much detail on the system itself, but you can call them up and have them set up a personalized demo. [video]

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Michael Van Valkenburgh’s Teardrop Park North in Battery Park City (NYC), when completed, will employ computerized heliostats (8 feet in diameter) to reflect sunlight into what would have been a park in the shadows of its surrounding high-rises.

via Tribeca Trib

The SENSACELL system is a new human interface technology for various interior and exterior applications and is scalable from a single module to 1000’s of square feet. The modular sensor detects objects within 6″ through materials such as glass, plastics, wood, tile, etc. The system’s network can also interface with a computer for control over any module within the system. Prices will range from $150- $350 per square foot, depending on the model, type and color of LEDs etc. [video]

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System X, designed by Ross Lovegrove, consists of modular lighting components which are linkable to each other and placed vertically or horizontally. The system can be programmed to control the lighting temperature and brightness for zones of any size. It reminds me of Servo’s Lattice Archipelogics.

via Mocoloco
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Element Labs is lighting company specializing in innovative lighting using LED technology. By embedding color LEDs in different casings and providing simple controllers to animate the surfaces, they have produced a whole line of dazzling lighting products.

NeoFlex is their alternative to traditional neon. By combining a plastic tubular casing and LED technology, they have harnessed the energy efficiency and longevity of LED lighting and significantly simplified the fabrication process.

The Versa TILE is simply a 10 square cm tile lit with color LEDs. When the tiles are assembled into an array spanning any imaginable area (as long as the controller can handle it), it produces a display with each tile representing 1 pixel. Imagine watching your 1600 x1200 display at 10cm per pixel? That would be 160x 120 meters or 525 x 394 feet!

via Element Labs