For the next painting which has a 6 foot rusted steel panel down the center, he wanted interactivity of 2 kinds.  In one mode the painting would automatically cycle through 8 different musical modes (see animation above), and in the other one could directly access each mode from a hand held remote control.

I designed the electronics, and he came to my workshop over several days while I supervised him as he wired all the lights into a grid so that I could wire my electronic circuits to them.

He provided me with graphs of the light patterns and I programmed them into a microcontroller chip that I mounted near the bottom of the center section.  3 sub-boards were required at intervals along the painting to address banks of LEDs in 6X8 grids.  Each one has a brightness adjustment so that Tom could set the brightness of the lights relative to the ambient light.

I also designed and built the custom remote control, and mounted a small panel on the bottom edge of the painting for the switch that changes modes from remote control to automatic display.  A power socket allows the painting to run from a small DC adapter.

When a new light pattern is displayed the previous one blinks off, then the new one fills in from the top as if the artist's brush was painting them on.