Co-optics: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Orchestrating Light Through Material and Computational Innovation

Catie Newell (A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning)

Collaborators: Arash Adel, Assistant Professor – A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning; Raj Rao Nadakuditi, Associate Professor, EECS – College of Engineering; Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS)

Light is of great importance to the health and well-being of humans and the environment. In our currently overlit world, we have lost important connections to our surroundings and the shifts of day and night in exchange for the artificial illumination that is ever-present in our spaces and devices. Co-optics seeks to scientifically and artfully deploy design information and digital fabrication, revealing unexpected moments of glow, obscuirty, or color shifts, made possible through a robust and shared integrative physical and computational platform.