Drawing Lightscapes

"Without the light and the screen there can be no picture. To know the picture as the play of light on the screen, gives freedom from the idea that the picture is real."      

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

Light is drawn onto an installation of screens that register temporal light scapes. Viewers peek behind the screens into constructed environments and enter the depth of the drawings. As one enters, his shadow modifies the drawing.

 

Drawing Lightscapes explores the tension between the physical and the projected through using light as a medium to draw lightscapes onto screens and lighting objects as an instrument to project, filter and reflect this light. The installation uses light as a projectional drawing device at the scale of architecture. It is composed of screens and custom light fixtures that are designed to work together to create several different immersive environments.

 

The screens allow for two major modes of viewing: the unobstructed view of the lightscapes as drawings, which imply an imaginary scape, as well as narrow passage zones, which encourage the viewer to peek behind the screens and enter the field of projection. As one journeys behind the screen, one enters into the depth of the drawing and in so doing modifies the drawing itself. The existence of multiple modes of viewing creates a perceptual scale shift in the experience of the viewer, moving from abstraction to humor.

 

Light is a transient, ineffable material in its nature; drawing with light maintains this fleeting quality through temporary registration of moments, rather than maintaining a fixed recording of them. As the projection stops, the screen returns to its original blank state, with no trace of the drawings that passed through its surface.