“Breathtaking” at NMMoA

“Breathtaking” is an open source hardware installation built into a wall at New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe NM, which uses RGB LED strips inside custom cut/translucent acrylic letters that are designed to “inhale” and “exhale” at the rate of an average breath. Its purpose was to welcome visitors into an exhibit with multiple New Mexico based artist’s installations.

https://vimeo.com/799324356
https://vimeo.com/799335121

The museum used a local vendor in Santa Fe to cut the acrylic letters to spell out BREATHTAKING and technology fabricator Becca Sharp was hired to solder and test the electronics used in the title wall. Technology fabricator Rianne Trujillo was also hired to help with the installation and creative coding for the LEDs. They used a single Arduino Uno and just over two meters of LED strips from Adafruit. This project was developed and created in two months, however, due to the Covid19 Pandemic this project was shelved and not installed until the following year - almost nine months after prototyping /began.