Sleepy Lamp

by Cathy Wong

by Cathy Wong

I wanted to make a lamp to comfort sleepless people. How could a light put you to sleep? My hypothesis: Repetitive light rhythms are hypnotizing.

Thus I modified a static horoscopic lamp into a intelligent lamp that creates a light signal with two keys – ‘short’ and ‘long’. Together with ‘silence’ – the moment of darkness between two signals – this offers me a small ‘vocabulary’, similar to morse code, which I may use to create various ambiences. The light appears to breath.

The game: The light ‘breathes’ weakly in a particular pattern. The sleeper-to-be is encouraged to emulate the rhythm through snapping with her fingers. If this happens successfully, the light will grow brighter, and change to a different pattern. This sequence repeats, until the light reaches a climax scenario blinking in a spectacular pattern mimicking a nightly sky with light. Then the light will fade out – if the sleeper fell asleep – or the game might start anew.