There are projects you take because they pay the bills, and there are projects that remind you why you got into this work in the first place. Spectral Wake was the second kind — the kind that keeps you up at 3 AM sketching on a tablet, not because of a deadline, but because you can't stop seeing it in your head.
In February 2026, we debuted "Spectral Wake" at the New American Home — the official show home of the NAHB International Builders' Show (IBS) in Las Vegas. It's the largest and most ambitious art installation our studio has ever produced, and it represents everything we believe about the future of experiential design in residential spaces.
The Commission
The New American Home is the construction industry's most visible stage. Every year, NAHB selects one home to showcase the cutting edge of residential design, technology, and craftsmanship. For 2026, that home belonged to Jason Eichenholz — CEO of Relativity Networks and co-founder and former CTO of Luminar Technologies, the company that helped bring lidar to autonomous vehicles.
Jason has spent his career bending light. Literally. His life's work is the physics of photons — directing them, splitting them, making them do things nobody thought possible. So when the opportunity came to create an art installation for his home, the brief practically wrote itself: make the house feel like light lives there.
The Material: Dichroic Acrylic
Spectral Wake is built from dichroic acrylic — a material that splits white light into its component color spectrum. Depending on the angle of light and the angle you're viewing from, the same panel can appear deep violet, electric cyan, gold, or magenta. It doesn't need electricity to be stunning. Sunlight alone transforms the space into a living prism.
During the day, natural light passing through the home's windows interacts with the sculpture, painting abstract color fields across walls, floors, and ceilings that shift continuously as the sun moves. At night, integrated LED and projection systems take over, creating entirely different moods — from ambient warmth to full music-reactive party mode where the sculpture dances with the beat.
The tagline we landed on — "A single wavelength, surfing the spectrum" — captures the essence. One source of light, infinite expressions of color.
Design and Collaboration
I designed Spectral Wake from the ground up — every panel angle, every mounting point, every lighting interaction was intentional. The sculpture spans the main living area of the home, with additional wall-mounted pieces that extend the visual language into adjacent spaces. The goal was never to create a single object you look at. It was to create an environment you feel immersed in.
For fabrication, we collaborated with Stache Lightning — Evan Miga's studio, which brought the engineering precision needed to take what existed in my head and make it structurally real. The mounting system had to integrate seamlessly with the home's architecture while supporting panels that needed precise angular positioning for maximum light interaction. It's the kind of problem that requires both an artist's eye and an engineer's rigor, and Evan brought that in full.
Art Leads, Technology Supports
Here's something we believe deeply at 42 Audio Visual: in the best experiential spaces, art leads and technology supports. Not the other way around.
Spectral Wake isn't impressive because of its LED system or its control software (though both are sophisticated). It's impressive because the art concept is strong enough to stand on its own — dichroic acrylic splitting sunlight doesn't need a single watt of electricity to stop you in your tracks. The technology layers on top, expanding the sculpture's vocabulary from daytime beauty into nighttime spectacle. But the art came first. Always.
"We don't add technology to make something feel impressive. We create art that is impressive, then use technology to give it more range."
This philosophy shaped every decision. The LED integration is invisible when off. The projection mapping enhances the dichroic effects rather than competing with them. The control system is intuitive enough that Jason can shift the entire mood of his home with a single tap.
IBS 2026: The Reveal
The International Builders' Show runs February 17–19, 2026, and the New American Home is its centerpiece. Thousands of builders, architects, designers, and media tour the home each year. For most, it's their first encounter with experiential art in a residential context — and that's exactly the conversation we wanted to start.
Residential spaces have been underserved by experiential design for too long. Hotels, museums, corporate headquarters — they all invest in immersive art. But homes? Homes get a painting on the wall and maybe a statement light fixture. We think that's about to change, and Spectral Wake is our proof of concept.
The Bigger Picture
This project also carries a philanthropic dimension through the Jonathan's Landing Foundation, connecting the home's purpose to something larger than a single showpiece. It's a reminder that great spaces can serve great causes.
For us, Spectral Wake represents a turning point. It's the clearest expression yet of what we mean when we say we're an experiential design studio — not just an AV company. We design how people feel in a space. We create art that responds to its environment. We build things that make you stop, look up, and feel something you didn't expect.
If you want to see the full project in detail, visit our project page for The Building That Light Built.
And if this kind of work resonates with you — if you have a space that deserves more than a flat screen — we should talk.
