Kai Lab
CMYK Searchspace (2024) is a colour synthesizer and contemporary light. Turning any combination of the four dials you can search through an infinite colour space to select the perfect illumination and hue. Evoking designs of a vintage radio, the minimalist aesthetic of CMYK Searchspace emits a flawlessly consistent light.
Sinusoidal Noise (2022) is a modular light installation that uses random oscillating patterns to evoke a larger sense of movement. The piece is made up of an array of light filled voids each slowly fading on and off at a unique frequency. These slow, detuned oscillations create the illusion of shapes emerging, where light appears to pass between pixels as they move through different phases. At each instant, the emergent pattern is a unique snapshot of a chaos of sine waves. Each image quickly merges into the next. Much like the way we tend to look for familiar shapes in clouds, we find ourselves imagining relatable forms and observing unexpected transformations across the work.
Kai Lab is a London-based arts and design practice founded by creative technologist Sean Malikides (1993). The studio creates electronic, mechanical and sonic artworks and projects which are driven by the desire to understand the core components of intriguing, complex and beautiful natural phenomena. Each artwork aims to make tangible the intangible, and invites the audience to use all their senses to experience a new perception of the environment.
The observation of nature shows that the beauty of physical events is often the result of the strict rules of physics combined with the randomness of our chaotic environment. Kai Lab’s work aims to find the delicate balance between what technology can control and what randomness can disrupt, to build objects and spaces that are relatable yet surprising.