Tricktronix is Patrick O'Neill, and Patrick O'Neill has spent more than a decade on one idea: a kaleidoscope that responds to touch. The Australian digital artist, now based in Thailand, founded the studio in 2012 as a boutique design agency, but the kaleidoscope work took over. His signature piece, Light Portal, runs on custom software he has been iterating continuously ever since, and the ambition is spelled out in his own words: "A psychedelic synergy of kaleidoscopic symmetries."
Original art made of light.
The route here was not direct. O'Neill studied history and Spanish at Indiana University before pivoting into digital art and design, with a stint at Euclideon Holographics along the way. He also records music under the name inSilico. Outside Hopscotch his work has mostly lived on the Australian festival circuit; at Earth Frequency Festival 2024 in Queensland he showed a version of Light Portal projected onto an elastic surface, so guests could physically push and pull the image itself. Other pieces include Crystal Aura and Heart Space.
At Hopscotch, Light Portal is a "hyperdelic super kaleidoscope machine" and one of the longer-running exhibits in the lineup, present in both San Antonio and Portland. You stand in front of it and the light notices you. Touch the surface and the symmetrical patterns stretch, bend, and warp under your hand. Dance, and a colored silhouette of you folds into the mirrored geometry. The patterns never repeat. Most projection-based art is look-don't-touch; this one asks the opposite, which is why kids and adults both end up pressed against it, and why it keeps showing up in videos of Hopscotch online.
Every version of Light Portal runs the latest build of code O'Neill has been refining since 2012. One idea, thousands of iterations.
