Dimension 1.5 was an interactive room commissioned by the Giggle Box in Missoula Montana. Inspired by Meow Wolf and other interactive museums, the Giggle Box was an experimental art space located in Missoula Montana that was in operation between 2020-2021. In this post, we will explain the inner workings of this project and how it came to be.

We were approached by a local entrepreneur who wanted an interactive technology exhibit in Montana’s first interactive pop-up art museum. We pitched the idea of an interactive laser exhibit – The idea was to create laser light in the form of the person walking through the exhibit. This was the first time our production team had to build something robust enough to endure thousands of visits open to the public over the span of years.

Design and Testing

Anyone who has worked with lasers knows the “cool factor” is being able to see the laser beam path. This is traditionally done with fog or haze. The problem with running a fog machine for long periods of time is the operational cost is too high. We had to find another way, so we experimented with various forms of plastic. Perhaps the same effect could be achieved if the laser passed through multiple panes of plastic. We tried milk jugs, discarded plastic, and then eventually everyday plastic wrap sold as food wrap or cling film. Here’s the first test with plastic wrap.

The plastic wrap worked the best by far, but there was still a problem. The creases and folds in the plastic distorted the image and made it difficult for the laser to pass through more than a few panes. The goal was at least 10 panes of plastic stretched vertically and have it take up as much of the room as possible. If this was going to work as intended, we needed to construct 10 very smooth wrinkle-free panes of plastic wrap. A challenge for sure.

After a number of sketches, we came up with the following design.

LEDs and Signal Routing

The lighting needs to be dark for lasers to really shine, but not so dark you can’t see anything. An LED walkway seemed appropriate. For added fun and interactivity we decided this LED walkway should be controlled by arcade buttons. And if there’s arcade buttons, they might as well control the laser as well. The Teensy microcontroller proved to be the best suited piece of hardware because it has the ability to run LED lights using the FastLED library, as well as send midi signals to the computer to affect the laser output. This was the signal path.

Construction

Up until this point ideas were only on paper so it was finally time for construction.

Constructing the plastic screens was very time consuming. With the help of patient team members we were able to get some very nice smooth plastic screens hung at various heights and sizes.

We commissioned excellent painters help paint murals for the room. The fluorescent lighting was replaced with blacklights so one mural was a simple black and white checkerboard design and the other was a blacklight reactive space mural.

Walk Through

Here’s a walk-through video. Due to the lighting and nature of the space, it’s incredibly difficult to get an accurate depiction through pictures and video.

The space successfully ran for over a year with 99% uptime. Virtually no maintenance was performed throughout the course of its time available to the public. Project successful!