← Selected workReal-time butterfly visuals / Event installation

Lexus A-Un Milan Design Week

Seasonal colour travels across a butterfly woven from translucent thread. Within Lexus A-Un, heartbeat and movement influence a room of projected light and sound. Commissioned by Aircord, Refractiv designed, animated and programmed the butterfly animation.

Lexus A-Un, Milan Design Week, 2025

Project details

Year: 2025
End client: Lexus
Commissioner: Aircord Inc.
Event: Milan Design Week, Milan
Surface: Translucent butterfly structure woven from 35 kilometres of thread
Input: Biometric signals supplied by Aircord’s wider system
Creative direction: Tatsuki Ikezawa, STUDEO
Refractiv role: Design, animation and programming of the real-time butterfly animation

A butterfly made of light

The translucent structure gave the projection a physical depth. Light could reveal the threads, move across the butterfly and change the atmosphere around the guests. The visual sequence travelled through spring, summer, autumn and winter, from sakura pink to winter white.

The installation took its name from A-Un, a description of people acting in harmony without needing words. Shared heartbeats informed its rhythm of expansion and contraction.

Colour and light reveal the threads of the Lexus A-Un butterfly

Giving the visual layer its behaviour

Refractiv developed the butterfly animation in TouchDesigner, shaping how colour and movement changed with the supplied biometric input. The response needed to register changes in the audience while holding the visual character of each seasonal state.

Aircord developed the biometric, projection and control framework and integrated this visual layer into its Unity-based system. Projection and spatial audio formed the wider installation around the butterfly. Refractiv’s contribution was the design and behaviour of the projected butterfly visuals within that collaboration.