Dezeen Magazine

"The pieces wouldn't be anything without the people who interact with them" – Jason Bruges

A wall of digital animals that distract children on their way to surgery is one of the interactive installations presented by designer Jason Bruges in this movie we filmed at our Designed in Hackney Day.

Jason Bruges at Designed in Hackney

Above: digital wallpaper at Great Ormond Street Hospital

In the movie, Jason Bruges shows 20 short movie clips of his studio's installations and experiments as part of the Pecha Kucha event during our Designed in Hackney Day last summer.

Jason Bruges at Designed in Hackney

Above: a hotel lobby with colour-changing walls

Among them is a project for Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, which saw the studio install a digital wallpaper along a corridor.

Jason Bruges at Designed in Hackney

"The whole rationale behind the piece is to distract children on their way to surgery," explains Bruges. "We’ve created this sort of half-tone forest in which digital animals appear and disappear as you’re wheeled through en route to surgery."

Jason Bruges at Designed in Hackney

Above: light installation at Tate Britain

"We’re a studio that crosses the boundaries of art, architecture and interaction design," he adds.

Jason Bruges at Designed in Hackney

Above: kinetic installation for More4 ident

He then introduces a hotel lobby in Madrid with interactive walls of dots that change colour with every visit, and an installation of thin, wobbly lights in the Tate Britain art gallery in London.

Jason Bruges at Designed in Hackney

The studio has also worked on projects with television companies, creating imaginary radio studios for a BBC ident and installations of flapping squares for TV channel More4.

Jason Bruges at Designed in Hackney

Above: micro wind turbines on London's South Bank

A project about "energy-scavenging" on the roof of Queen Elizabeth Hall saw hundreds of tiny turbines converting wind energy into a field of light.

Jason Bruges at Designed in Hackney

The studio installed a track in the Olympic Park where visitors can race 100 metres against a light representing sprinter Usain Bolt, while elsewhere in the park the studio created mechatronic bubbles for Coca-Cola.

Jason Bruges at Designed in Hackney

Above: mechatronic bubbles for Coca-Cola

There's also a piece for a Richard Rogers-designed building in Soho. "It’s a lift that remembers all the movements it’s made during the day and plays them back at night as a performance," explains Bruges, "so it fills the time from dusk to midnight with this symphony of light, which is hacked into the lift’s control system."

Jason Bruges at Designed in Hackney

"None of these pieces would be anything without the people who actually interact with them," he concludes.

Jason Bruges at Designed in Hackney

Above: lights on a Soho building show the movements of the lift inside

We've featured a few projects by Jason Bruges on Dezeen, including a lighting mobile that moves around to map its surroundings and an installation of light panels that open and close like flowers – see all our stories about Jason Bruges Studio.

Jason Bruges at Designed in Hackney

Designed in Hackney is a project by Dezeen to highlight the best architecture and design made in the borough, which was one of the five host boroughs for the London 2012 Olympic Games as well as being home to Dezeen’s offices.

Watch more movies from our Designed in Hackney Day or see more stories about design and architecture from Hackney.