Aurora was a multimedia installation created to share the feeling of the northern lights and to connect two places from my life — Okinawa and Alaska. The centerpiece was a cyberpunk-inspired torii gate with six sixty-foot loops of side-glow fiber-optic mesh rising from the top.

Side-glow fiber begins to lose brightness after about thirty feet, but instead of treating that as a limitation, we built it into the design. Each loop was lit from both ends, allowing light to travel toward the center from opposite directions. The natural fade and overlap created moving gradients of color that shifted like real auroras, changing in response to the music playing in the space.

The room was kept dark so the light could stand out. A black-lit cherry blossom tree and soft seating arranged like a Japanese garden gave visitors a place to sit and watch. Live music filled the space, and the aurora above responded to every note.

Photographs don’t fully capture the experience, but the videos give a good sense of how the light and sound worked together.