Saturday, July 31, 2010

light stuff

Diane Landry, Mandala, 2002
at SECCA re-opening exhibition
Look Again
earlier this month
(image posted by SECCA on Flickr)

Saw this hugely powerful light work by Diane Landry at SECCA in Winston Salem recently (great show all round btw). The laundry basket (with clear plastic water bottles strapped round the top) and moving light source create a shadow that expands and contracts, dominating the space magnificently, like a sort of moving Rose window... It was AWESOME.


Peter Kogler, Untitled, 2010,
Multiprojection, sound, loop
at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
(news on E-Flux)

Press release says it is a 360 degree multiprojection from 12 projectors, creating a "space of illusion that completely envelops the observer". The sound vibrations by sonic artist Franz Pomassl from home made devices and technological instruments helps dissolve the space, as "the ground disappears from under our feet." It looks seamless, love to be there!


Jim Campbell, Scattered Light (2010),
Madison Square Park, NY
(art news daily)

Almost 2000 LED lights in a 3D matrix, going on and off to animate shapes of figures walking across the space. The images (which obviously are conceived in 2D it seems) break up as you move away from the initial viewing point and "blurring the boundaries between image and object". Like to see this in the flesh. I loved the more luscious quality of his tiny Ambiguous Icon #1 (running falling) from 2000 - LEDs embedded in 12 x 15 inch plexiglass.

Well, ending outside the remit of art but in the spirit of this website and the right direction for the planet... This is an amazing book so far. Ray demonstrates that big business (the kind with US$700 million dollar worldwide sales each year) CAN completely embrace green technology, and that Industrialists can be activists with enormous power and influence. He's a relentless salesman which can get a little grating but his actions are worth it, and the idea that green equals profits might just get other industries off their butts...

I have the stirrings of ideas for art installations in this direction but they'll have to incubate for a while.