Philips Lighting employs interactive art to promote new technologies

Similar to many high-tech companies, Philips has presented a wide range of new technological innovations during the most recent ICT Forum, funded by EU and held under the label 'Digitally Driven Europe", in Brussels, Belgium. But the company also used an interesting approach to promote its new LED technologies, when it commissioned an art collective from the UK, rAndom International, to develop an interactive installation called Mirrorwall, illustrating the new ways of how we can interact with light.

Presented among other technological innovations, predominantly pragmatic and serious, the Mirrorwall installation emphasized emotional, creative and humanizing role that new technologies can play in our life. Peter Visser, coordinator of Open Innovation program from Philips Lighting, the division that commissioned the art work, said that such examples illustrate a novel approach by the company to innovation.

The new technologies are not necessarily used to immediately create next products or services, but initially presented to the creative communities who are encouraged to experiment and explore new qualities and unexpected possibilities of the technologies. The European Commission is to allocated over €2.8 billion to the of ICT research programs in 2011-2012.