Tochi's Hut

One of the coolest exhibit for Luminato was definitely the "Pulse Front" exhibit at Harbourfront Centre. The exhibit is a set of spotlights placed around the Harbourfront district, controlled by computers to light up the Toronto skyline. The coolness factor does not end here though. Beside each light turret is a little metal stand with two little handle bars. You grasp two handle bars for 10-15 seconds. The bar somehow detects the pulse from your hands and syncs up the nearby light turret to your heartbeat. Hence, PULSE FRONT.

Man, this exhibit was so uber cool. Holding the bars felt like I was manning some futuristic laser gun turret, whereby I was controlling/firing the beams subconsciously. The only thing missing was the recoil effect, but it's a laser gun after all.

I just got news that this exhibit is being extended to June 17th! A little aside for some photography analysis. It was rather difficult to capture the lights. Given the night scene, the exposure definitely had to be long in order to get the proper exposure on the buildings. However, since the beams of light were always in motion, I couldn't set the shutter speed for too long (or else everything looks like fans of light). In the end, I had to forgo some picture quality and set up the ISO quite high and open up to the widest aperture, in order to get a manageable shutter speed. The photos were taken with my Tokina 12-24mm wide angle lens. More photos can be found at my Flickr page.