Think of the laser security systems from "Mission: Impossible" or "Ocean's Twelve" - skilled thieves contorting around lasers with heist music in the background.

I created an interactive experience for music festivals that brought this cinematic trope to life. The Lazer Maze debuted at Engulf festival, and now that same technology secures my living room.

Inspiration

I wanted to create for the music festival community.

At festivals, I am wowed by the art installations: massive trolls made of reclaimed wood, Frick Frack Blackjack, and see-saws with fire coming out of them.

The installations need to be experienced to be understood. Playing in their shadow changed my life, and I have a special attachment to the art that helps create these magical atmospheres. After going to many festivals, I became a 'critic.' I was even selected to give art tours at Burning Man. But I wanted to take the next step from consumer to producer. I wanted to take all of the knowledge I gained from being exposed to so many great art installations and create something I could share with the community. By becoming a creator, I became more involved and invested.

I tapped my network to connect with Walker Babington an artist I admired and began contributing to a collective that built ZoZo Bot, a 50-foot wooden robot made entirely of reclaimed wood. I learned about the design process, got better at working with my hands, and removed countless nails from old siding and fencing. With ZoZo Bot and a couple of other creative experiences under my belt, I wanted to take the lead and bring my own vision to life.

I initially was excited about creating light art, using space as a canvas and creating geometric patterns with lasers. Using space as a medium felt abstract and unique, different from wood or acrylic.

Iteration

So I prototyped a Star of David using six separate laser beams to create this ancient Jewish symbol. Each laser projects a straight line at its own angle, and they're arranged in a row with one foot of space between each laser. Looking at it from the side, you'd see six distinct beams, each in its own space, none of them touching. But when you stand directly in front of the installation, these separate lines visually stack and overlap to form the perfect geometry of the Star of David. It's like a visual poem about community - each beam exists in its own space, completely separate, yet from the right perspective, they unite to create something sacred and whole. It's a meditation on how individuals, while maintaining their own distinct paths, can come together to create patterns of profound meaning.

While it was a neat trick, I didn't think the star would stop people in their tracks at festivals. So I thought about how to make an installation that captured and held attention. Reading about how games can hold people's focus, and drawing from my own experiences being attentive in immersive kinetic experiences, I decided to build something interactive. There is something about play that captures and holds people's attention. The immersiveness of being part of the art rather than just an observer elevates the experience. But I still wanted to work with lasers. I got the Lazer Maze idea because everyone understands the concept from movies, but it's novel in the real world as very few people have ever encountered a real laser security system. So I am bringing an artistic concept to life.

I imagined the maze inviting people to move their bodies into silly positions like Twister, and as a yoga teacher, I love getting people bending, stretching, and contorting. I imagined a social aspect of people doing it together or watching their partners navigate the maze. And I loved the idea that since I'd never done a Lazer Maze personally, it would be a novel experience for most people - because honestly, sometimes I feel like I've seen it all in the festival art world.

I also loved that this would be an interesting combination of technical challenge, immersive experience, and artistic display. I loved the intersectionality, and that the maze itself presented both electrical hardware and software challenges.

So with the idea formed and the challenges in front of me, I began to build the Lazer Maze.

Implementation

I had never created a circuit board or programmed a personal project. My last experience working with electronics was building a radio from a DIY home kit with my dad when I was 8. I passed Comp Sci 1 and immediately decided programming wasn't for me. I am an internet nerd and a creative, with near-zero engineering skills.

So this Lazer Maze was going to be a learning journey.

But I love projects and project-based learning. The challenge of having a real and meaningful problem gives me more motivation to learn and overcome obstacles so that I can eventually reach my goal.

So I started by learning from those who came before. There are less than 10 youtube videos about people making laser maze’s or trip wires but I watched all of them. Each video gave me another insight, like inserting photosensors into ping pong balls or using an Arduino to program the lasers and the alarm. Mr. Beast even turned the concept into a super high-production challenge while I was building, but his lasers weren't alarm-responsive.

Then I found a few GitHub repositories with code that I could use to get an idea of how to start. I even connected with one of the programmers who created a laser maze as a children's play space in Denmark.

I decided to first focus on the hardware of wiring up the lasers to the Arduino and choosing the right materials before tackling the software component. I would like to thank Daddy Bezos and AliExpress for helping me get the right materials. I used low-powered lasers to avoid damaging anyone's eyes, cheap photosensors, lots and lots of wire, and cheap buzzers. Almost every material was generic, and the most expensive piece of equipment was the $35 Arduino board. However, interestingly, AliExpress had full-on kits for Laser Mazes. I ended up buying custom swivel mirrors that are perfect for my needs, but all the other Chinese parts were inferior to a DIY setup.

Wiring up the board was painstaking and tedious. Connecting very small 30 AWG wire securely is far more difficult than I remember. I tried soldering, wire nuts, crimping, and electrical tape. I covered my floor in electrical components and persisted until the board was properly wired with 5 lasers, 5 photosensors, a buzzer, a push button, an LED strip, and an external battery pack.

Then it was time for the software part. I started programming with ChatGPT 3.5 and Claude 3 Sonnet as assistants. Thank goodness for low-level AI programming. I was able to give a very detailed description of the requirements, explain how I wanted the code to function, and share example programs I found online to develop a prototype code. The first time I uploaded the code to the Arduino and fired it up, the lasers didn't even turn on. I went back to the basics and eventually developed basic code that would trigger an alarm when a laser was tripped. The first time I broke a light beam and triggered an alarm, I was elated. I felt like a wizard. I had just made magic.

However, there were still many bugs, with some alarms working and others not responding. Moreover, I saw how important it was to have the laser directly aligned with the photosensor. If the laser went off the sensor, it would trigger the alarm indefinitely. This was eventually solved with a software solution that turns off a laser that triggers the alarm continuously. The initial test laid clear the challenges to solve.

I continued to iterate and improve on the code by installing safety features that turned off the laser automatically when it was tripped (so it's impossible for a laser to damage the eyes), a setup mode that pauses the game so I can align the lasers with mirrors and sensors, and a calibration mode to detect ambient light levels.

One of the biggest challenges was visibility and fog. Without fog, the lasers are invisible and the maze is nearly impossible. Games are only fun when the most capable participant succeeds, so an impossible game isn't great, especially for silly, unserious festival settings. Adding a fog machine instantly makes the lasers visible. However, the density of the fog disrupts the lasers and lowers the light levels enough that the photosensor triggers the alarm. While the photosensors report values between 0-1023 (Arduino's full analog range), they fundamentally operate like a simple light switch - either detecting the laser beam (readings 0-100) or not detecting it (readings 850-1100). Despite appearing to have a wide measurement range, these basic photosensors aren't actually good at detecting partial light - they're designed for binary "yes/no" light detection. This limitation becomes problematic with fog. As fog particles scatter the laser beam, the sensors struggle to definitively determine if the beam is blocked or not. Rather than trying to make the sensors more precise, I had to work around their binary nature by making the system less sensitive - requiring a beam to be broken for 0.5 seconds before triggering the alarm. A quick slice won't trigger the alarm. This less sensitive system is better for gameplay and visibility, but it creates a problem with first impressions. When people first see the maze, they run their hand through a laser to familiarize themselves, and when the laser doesn't respond, they lose trust and interest. It seems like the game is broken or poorly made. It's a subtle human response that makes a subconscious difference. Still, technical challenges were to be expected. If this concept was easy to implement, it would probably be a more common game in arcades.

Installation

The technology itself can fit into a milk crate, and even most of that space is taken up by wiring. But I needed to build a structure to actually host the maze. I asked every builder I know about material types and, while I got many suggestions, I ended up walking around Lowe's for an hour testing out different ideas. I needed something that could hold the lasers in place and ideally was lightweight. Some options were PVC pipe (think having 6 coat racks), or a foam structure with metal joints, but I decided to build a hallway out of reclaimed wood and use Styrofoam wall insulation on the sides because it would be easy to make holes for the lasers while still being lightweight.

I liked the hallway idea because it would be a physical structure that added another element to the installation and gave it more cachet. It also would draw interest as attendees may be curious about what's inside this haunted-looking small room.

I visited the Green Project, a New Orleans recycle store, and bought a beautiful old wooden door and some reclaimed wood, including a bent 2x4 and some old house siding. The vision was coming together of a haunted hallway with a big old door that piqued curiosity. Who doesn't want to know what is behind the door?

I built a doorframe, my first time ever doing that. Now there was a door to nowhere in my backyard.

From there, I needed more wood, so I drove around New Orleans' Bywater neighborhood and stumbled onto a dumpster from a recently renovated house filled with long, strong wood siding that was perfect for my needs. As it was about to begin raining, I put on my gloves and dove headfirst into the dumpster, filled up my truck with wood, and headed back home. With the new wood, I added a rectangular frame sturdy enough to stand strong if drunk hippies stumbled onto it.

Building on the uneven land of my backyard provided its own challenges, and the structure was tilted and droopy until my dad came to visit and insisted that I start using a level. This part wouldn't have been possible without help from friends like Greg, Matt, and my dad.

This structure wasn't going to be anything beautiful, but I was building it fast and it was my first effort. I figured that like the Lazer Maze, I would continue to iterate and get better and better. But the only way to start solving problems and learning was to get busy doing.

But once the structure was built up, we had to take it apart and load it into my pickup to be transported to the festival grounds. It was a little frustrating to take apart something I had just labored to build, but now that the system was clear and I had done it before, doing it again would be much easier.

I arrived at the Engulf festival grounds a day before the event started with a friend, Jacob, and we got to work rebuilding the structure. However, the Styrofoam sheets, which do the crucial job of holding the lasers and sensors, were destroyed in transport. The festival is in Kentwood, the hometown of Britney Spears, and more than an hour from the nearest chain hardware store. So I wasn't able to complete the build. I came back the next day with a Styrofoam sheet, and while others were partying, I got to work installing the sheet, placing the lasers, aligning the mirrors, and syncing up with the photosensors. I turned game mode on and voilà - the Lazer Maze was live.

People had fun with the installation and immediately understood the concept, eagerly trying to contort their bodies through the laser beams. The game-like element created natural social interactions as friends cheered each other on and competed for the fastest completion time. The interactive nature of the piece drew people in and kept them engaged - exactly what I had hoped for when designing it.

There are clear areas for improvement. First, the maze was too difficult; having 10 different trip beams in a small space makes solving the maze nearly impossible. Second, the structure needs to be lit up with black lights to attract more interest. Third, the fog machine needs to be automated so that fog runs every few minutes to maintain visibility without requiring an attendant.

This project taught me so much more than just technical skills. Building the Lazer Maze showed me that I'm capable of creating complex installations, even without prior engineering experience. The project-based learning approach worked perfectly - having a concrete goal motivated me to teach myself programming, electronics, and construction skills that I never thought I'd master. What started as a scary, overwhelming idea became manageable through breaking it down into smaller challenges and persisting through each obstacle.

Most importantly, successfully bringing this installation to Engulf has given me the confidence to dream bigger. This is just the beginning of my journey creating interactive art for festivals. I'm looking forward to continuing to iterate on the Lazer Maze and dreaming up future innovations that bring people together through play and wonder.