INTERACTION DESIGN
Bloom
A living surface of light that glows wherever you reach for it.
July 2025
— Deep in the ocean, some creatures light up when they're disturbed. Bloom borrows that idea: a dark, living surface built in TouchDesigner that wakes up at your touch. Click, or simply move your hand, and light spreads outward from that point, blooming across the surface before slowly fading back into the dark.
ROLE
CONCEPT, TOUCHDESIGNER, INTERACTION DESIGN, GESTURE CONTROL
Project Overview
Light that responds to your reach.
The surface starts calm and dim, a slow-moving field of teal. Every interaction leaves a mark: wherever you point, the area brightens and glowing spots ripple outward, so the more you play, the more the surface comes alive. It feels less like pressing a button and more like disturbing something living.
The result is a waves of gloom effect from uncertain pattern and direction, following its own path just like how ocean waves travel where the winds meet
Approach
Fashion shooting in the studio
The piece is built as a node-based system in TouchDesigner, where the position of your input decides where light appears on the surface. The same network accepts two kinds of input: a mouse click for quick testing, and hand tracking for a touch-free experience, so the visual doesn't care how you reach it, only where.
Hand tracking runs through MediaPipe, which follows your hand through a regular webcam. No special hardware is needed, just a camera and a gesture.
Process
From click to gesture.
I started with mouse input to shape the look and behaviour of the glow, then replaced it with hand tracking. The shift changes everything: with a mouse, you're operating software; with your hand, you're reaching into the light itself, and the interaction becomes something you perform rather than click.
Reach for the dark, and it lights up.
Final Design
Creative Coding
Interaction Design
creative technology
TouchDesigner
The final version runs in real time and responds to hand gestures without any contact. Projected large, on a wall, a floor, or a dome, it could become an immersive installation where several people light it up together.
Future versions could project the visual at room scale, it can be placed in an exhibition design hall as well as a new media art piece.
Product Images