Trace is an interactive audio/video installation that allows its users to control both light and sound through gesture. A fog machine fills a room with fog to solidify the projector’s light into solid beams of light, similar to Anthony McCall’s Line Describing a Cone (1973). In Trace, the users face the lens of the projector and use their hands to control both the beams of light as well as sound so that they can create their own sound/light compositions. Trace is a light sculpting instrument where each hand plays a different sound and controls a separate beam of light. Users can see, hear, feel, and manipulate the light forms that they create. The light/sound is affected by the velocity and direction of their gestures. When the user stops moving, the light instrument stops, but there is a delay effect on both light and image so that users can observe and build upon the patterns of their composition. With Anthony McCall’s Line Describing a Cone (1973), McCall solidified the projector beam into a “light sculpture” by projecting a film of a circle drawing over time in a room full of haze. Once the circle was completed, the result was a solid walled, but hollow cone of light. The cone of light was meant to be viewed from multiple angles and explored as a sculptural object.

Trace, references Line Describing a Cone, in that the effect is largely created by projecting simple, two dimensional shapes, and “solidifying” the light beams with the use of a fog machine. However, Trace is primarily meant to be experienced as an interactive project that places the viewer into the beam facing the projector to get the effect, thereby, inverting the viewing convention of looking at the result of the projector (i.e., the projected image). The user in Trace engages with and affects both the form of sound, as well as light through their gesture.