I JUST WANTED TO TOUCH THE LIGHTS is an interactive, web-based experience that enables users to control stage lighting through hand gestures. It combines real-time music playback with a responsive visual environment, where hand movements are translated into changes in light, color, intensity, and motion. By mapping gesture input to dynamic lighting behavior, the system creates a continuous interaction between sound and visuals, allowing users to directly explore and manipulate an audio-visual space through movement.
In live concerts and performances, stage lighting shapes the entire atmosphere. Colours shifting, beams moving, intensity rising and falling with the sound. At the same time, there’s always someone controlling it through those large consoles, making small changes that instantly affect everything. Watching both the lights and the way they’re being controlled always felt really satisfying, like something you’d want to try yourself.
But that’s not something you can just do. These systems aren’t easily accessible. They require specific equipment, technical knowledge, and are often expensive. As an audience member, you’re always just watching, never interacting.
This experiment comes just from that urge to mess around with those lights. So now anyone who has felt the same can step in and experience it themselves.
After granting permission, the system activates the device’s webcam and uses real-time hand tracking powered by MediaPipe Hands to detect hand movements.
The 3D stage environment, including all lighting setups and spatial elements, was created in Blender and exported as a GLTF file. This file is loaded into the web environment using Three.js, where lighting behaviors, animations, and interactions are defined.
Hand tracking data is processed in real time, and the detected coordinates are mapped to different gestures. These gestures are then translated into lighting controls, affecting parameters such as intensity, color, movement, and overall behavior of the lights within the scene.
Music playback is handled through the Spotify API, with the option for users to upload their own audio files. The system continuously synchronizes gesture input with visual changes, creating a responsive interaction between sound and light. The experience runs entirely in the browser using a standard HTML-based structure. Antigravity was used as a coding assistant during the development of the logic for the entire experience.
Dev Manoj