Google Store Omotesando — Pixel Portal
A LiDAR-driven sand field at the entrance to Pixel Studio. The wordmark is made out of the people walking through it, and fades when they leave.
Above the doorway to Pixel Studio the wordmark is printed. On the floor it reads like its reflection, until you notice it is only there while someone is.
The sand comes out of you
An Ouster LiDAR watches the corridor and tracks whoever is in it. Every tracked person becomes a particle emitter; the sand comes off where you stand.
Once inside the active zone the particles stop being yours and start heading somewhere. They flow toward fixed targets that spell Pixel Studio, so the type is never drawn.
Starve it and it goes
When nothing new arrives for long enough they thin out and dissolve, and with the corridor empty the wordmark is gone completely. Someone walks in, emission starts again, and the wordmark forms again.
What I threw out
Late in tuning I gave the particles a long-range pull so they would find the letters from further away. Every number improved: grains on the text went from 54% to 71%, and grains stalling out in the open went from 9.4% to zero.
It was rejected on sight. A coherent long-range force turns the whole floor into laminar flow, and the LiDAR's scan-ring structure, which is supposed to dissolve in transport, survived it as visible streaks. The frame came out banded.
The attract force is a local capture, and transport is a different job.
- Role
- Particle system. LiDAR-driven emission, flow to letterform targets, and the decay behaviour when the corridor empties
- Built with
- TouchDesigner · GLSL · POPs · Ouster LiDAR
- Where
- Pixel Studio entrance, Google Store Omotesando, Tokyu Plaza Omotesando, Tokyo
- Opened
- 13 August 2026. Google's first flagship store outside the United States
- Studio
- Volvox Labs