An Ars Electronica's art group, Futurelab is experimenting with lighted forms, formations and geometric patterns in airspace kind of like crop circles in the sky with a drone swarm of programmed robot quadcopters in full operational flights.
"Spaxels (a portmanteau word from space pixels) are LED-equipped quadcopters. They make up a drone swarm that can “draw” three-dimensional figures in midair."
You could be forgiven for thinking the light painted forms visible in the video are fixed for the time that they're in view, but largely for the sake of the finished video, some of the formations are sourced from long-time-exposure photography and video clips, and some sequences are not!
The co-ordinated aspects of which ever program is operating the swarm, depends whether the viewers perspective, is a mere Trompe-L'oeil or actually maintains a true multidimensional view from any angle within its surround panorama.
Perhaps the Spaxels, Aerial Robot swarm Light painting idea will, one day be adopted by a worthy entrepreneur to use as an alternative to gunpowder fireworks?
View more of Futurelab's work here.
