A synthetic LED "morning glory"

My friend Shana mentioned this one to me: it's an LED sculpture that opens at night and folds closed during the day, like a light-sensitive flower. The creator, Wendy Legro, says: "The sun is our natural light source. Our homes are filled with artificial light replacing it, undeliberately disrupting our biological clock. This product works autonomously with a light sensor. During the day, mechanical flowers are closed enabling sunlight to come in. When sun sets, the flowers open and start to emit light. In this way, awareness for a beautiful phenomenon will be brought back."

I'm not usually into window-hanging decorations, but Legro's Morning Glory is a nice spin on the traditional suncatcher. I'd love to see an array of these over an entire window.

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Isn't this art project sending the exact opposite message Shana wants it to be? It's making artificial light during night.

Benji - first off, the project's creator is Wendy Legro, not my friend Shana. Secondly, I believe the idea is that the Morning Glory only provides artificial light at night, not during the day, when natural lighting is available. It's not intended to control people's lighting decisions, but rather to represent the choice to limit artificial lighting to those times when it is necessary, and to draw attention to that choice in an aesthetically appealing way.

Lovely! It reminds me a bit of the wall at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, covered with light-activated mechanical panels that open and close with the intensity of the sunlight, although they don't light up in the dark. There's a good picture here.