RAINBOW MACHINE

2019 - 2021

Rainbow Machine is an interactive public sculpture. It has been created to be mobile and deployable in different environments. Currently, it’s being exhibited for its third summer exhibition programme in Silo Park, Wynyard Quarter, Auckland, New Zealand. Previously exhibited at the Mangere Arts Centre, Hobsonville Point wharf, Takapuna beach and Western Springs park.

Materials: Sunlight, glass prisms, mirrors, steel, mechanical controls, paint, 2019

Artist team: Shahriar Asdollah-Zadeh, Patrick Loo, Sarosh Mulla.

Auckland Council Art Collection.

Rainbow Machine enables the participant to playfully perceive and capture the essence of light and its colour spectrum through physical activation.

Rainbow Machine is an artwork that allows children and adults to create rainbows by harnessing natural light. It connects art, science, design and engineering to create an ephemeral experience in saturated colour. It is an immersive experience of natural light through interactive play.

It was important for the artist team to make Rainbow Machine inclusive to all generations where possible. The possibility to perceive art in this way is what gives art its power to inspire, challenge, open, shape and change mindsets. Creating spaces and experiences that are immersive is at the heart of our creative works. The movement of the body while playing with Rainbow Machine’s sculptural forms are essential to the way it’s experienced. The interplay of light, colour, time (sun’s movement) and the spatial environment is paramount. Rainbow Machine is playfully activated in the public space when visitors participate. The visitor can create vivid light spectrums that continually change and reveal themselves through physical interaction. The artwork socialises visitors in that public space and this idea was significant to us.

Spectrum light and its movement and their effect on the viewer are just as important as its large bright physical sculptural form. The participant becomes the focus and the encounter is intimate when seeing the spectrum appear inside the cone and on their skin. At this point, the participant becomes aware of what they are witnessing and their relationship to it. That lasting colour memory of the experience is what interests us most. The colour memory that the visitor has of the experience and how they share that experience in the future is a living documentation of the project.

RAINBOW MACHINE was created in collaboration with Shahriar Asdollah-Zadeh, architectural designers Sarosh Mulla and Patrick Loo, alongside a team of amazing scientists, engineers and fabricators who with their collective collaborative passion brought the artwork to life.

Radio New Zealand on-air interview, 2020. The Weekend programme presents a conversation with radio presenter Lynn Freeman, and the artist team behind the RAINBOW MACHINE: Shahriar Asdollah-Zadeh, Patrick Loo and Sarosh Mulla.

Documentation photographs were taken by Shahriar Asdollah-Zadeh, Patrick Loo, David St. George and Auckland Council.