"White Noise/White Light," an interactive sound and light installation created by MIT Professor J. Meejin Yoon for the Athens 2004 Olympics, will be presented at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from May 2-8 as part of the weeklong celebration of the inauguration of Susan Hockfield as MIT's 16th president.

Comprised of a 50' x 50' grid of fiber optics and speakers, "White Noise/White Light" is an interactive sound and light field that responds to the movement of people as they walk through it. What appears at first to be a static, neutral and transparent grid of vertical markers dissolves into a luminous sound-scape by night. As pedestrians enter into the fiber optic field their presence and movement are traced by each stalk unit, transmitting white light from LEDs and white noise from speakers below. If motion is detected, the white LED illumination grows brighter while the white noise increases in volume. Once motion is no longer detected, the light and sound fade into dimness and silence. Just as white light is made of the full spectrum of color, white noise contains every frequency within the range of hearing in equal amounts.

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