Micah spent her childhood learning about computers and technology as an escape from isolated suburbia and gender dysphoria. She began her career as a software engineer, before eventually burning out and shifting her focus to art. In her artwork, Micah puts her technical skills to use creating control loops to achieve a particular aesthetic. The technical aspects become part of the piece itself, as opposed to simply supporting architecture. Her goal is to use technology in art to examine what makes us human.
One of Micah’s creations that enables her LED work is a board called Fadecandy (available from Adafruit). The idea for this board came from a Burning Man project called Ardent Cloud). The cloud was suspended 40 feet above the ground on a cherry-picker, and LEDs flickered with a unique subtlety. The flickering LEDs were hacked together for Burning Man, however this project kickstarted Micah’s foray in to LED art. The Fadecandy board makes tasteful, flickering LEDs accessible, as many projects using LEDs change rapidly in a jarring manner.
Micah used this board to create Ecstatic Epiphany, an art piece composed of several large panels of light-up cubes. These cubes change colors and intensity to create subtle, constantly shifting patterns. A camera tracks the movement of observers, and the LED pattern displays echos of their movements. If you stand still in front of the piece for long enough, an explosion of colors and shapes will occur.
Eclipse is a glowing orb suspended in the center of a dark room. From a distance, it looks like a solid sphere, but approaching closer reveals gaps in the cracked-glass surface which reveal the inner workings. Light flickers across the surface of the sphere. She intended the piece to be viewed as if it were a piece of alien technology to be examined with wonder from both a technological and artistic perspective.
The Zen Photon Garden is a browser-based raytracer. Raytracing is traditionally used in three dimensions, where the light eventually reaches a “camera”, the photon garden is two dimensional. There is some fun and cool programming going on behind the scenes.
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