Refraction Labs is the alter ego of Shadi El Hajj, a Creative Technology consultant based in London and specialising in Real-Time Graphics, Algorithmic Visuals and Interactive Installations.
For the past 15 Years I have been working at the intersection of Software Engineering, Digital Art, and R&D, for a broad range of international clients in the Creative Industry.
On the artistic side, I am the author of several Digital Art projects and Digital Dance performances. Many of them have been showcased at international festivals.
Refraction Labs is about creating magic through technology, turning light into colour.
Refraction Labs is the alter ego of Shadi El Hajj, a Creative Technology consultant based in London and specialising in Real-Time Graphics, Algorithmic Visuals and Interactive Installations.
Refraction Labs is about creating magic through technology, turning light into colour.
For Ericsson’s presence at MWC 2018, we designed and implemented four interactive gateways that react to participant’s presence in a unique way and materialise the brand’s new values.
Every gateway includes three Kinects which outputs are combined and stitched using a custom calibration algorithm.
Ford Smart Mobility commissioned us to design and implement a compelling data visualisation promoting road safety and illustrating how big data can help reduce accidents.
The dataset used to create the generative visuals consists of 40 million data points of 100 dimensions each.
As part of their online presence at Expo Dubai 2020, Siemens asked us to design a series of interactive visuals illustrating how six major cities are responding to Digitalisation.
These Data Portraits, part of Siemens’ “Atlas of Digitalization” are implemented in WebGL and run on all major platforms and devices.
As a showcase for world-renowned Rafael Viñoly Architects’ landmark project, Marble Arch Place, we implemented from scratch an interactive real-time rendering engine.
The completed WebGL engine features custom shaders and HDR environment mapping, runs in real-time on an iPad Pro.
Ontologies of Desire explores the relationship between an AI researcher and his digital offspring which comes to life and discovers a world of form, movement and emotions.
The generative visuals are driven by a bespoke system that captures a 3D scan of the dancers who interact with virtual simulation models.
Photon Rain is a Digital Performance where dancers paint with their bodies, creating a mental space filled with shadows gliding in ephemeral lightscapes.
A bespoke system detects the dancer’s movements, maps them to a fluid and particle simulation system which drives the “light paint” projected on stage.
El Cielo del Toboso is collective poetry writing experience where visitors are invited to visually re-write the Quixote by sending SMS messages.
An NLP algorithm connects the received words according to their semantic relationship in Cervantes’ work, displaying a spatial visualisation the corpus.
L’âge Nu (The Unclad Age) is a time-lapse film about nature and change, about the impermanence of life and the evanescence of things, images a dying old poet might have seen.
Shot across Europe using a bespoke HD system (HD cameras were not widely available then), the film features an algorithmic sound-track generated from image analysis.