Introduction

My interest in light surfaced through photography. I started taking photos around Frien Barnet in north London, which is a challenge to say the least, the decision of which dull road to point your camera at being the main problem. Even so, it was a good learning experience and gave me an opportunity to get to grips with my camera. I moved on to taking photos of anything interesting I could find, the main point of the exercise was to create an interesting image from all the mundane things around me, my favourite image was taken inside a washing machine drum.

The camera and enlarger give you a set of parameters through which you can begin to mould the image. James Turrell comments on this in an interview with the online magazine 'works and conversations';

"...first of all, where you point the camera, and whether you choose a lens that's a telephoto, which flattens the space, and sees through the distance, or a wide angle that sees a much wider area than we see. Then there is the setting of the aperture. All may be in focus, or just a part with the rest out of focus. Do you choose to put in a film that represents light from the sun as white, tungsten light as white, or fluorescent light as white; or do you use color, or infrared? Then, of course, you get this photo that you can change in development, and crop. Then you can present this photo as "proof of reality," when every step of the way you've created the reality."

It is the act of 'creating the reality' which I find so fascinating and it is this process I want to incorporate in my work. I will try to unpack the relevance of this over the following pages. I want my work to give people the opportunity to create their own reality through what I make, by experiencing it and interacting with it.

My current interest lies in working directly with light. My initial work this year was to understand the sun's movement and the changing quality of light it gives. My analysis of the sun's movement can be found in the portfolio section, entitled 'sun studies' and in the next page 'daylight - information from the sky'. I moved on to experimenting with light modulation through different media. The process of making the media; be it a grid, lense or refractor and observing the effects, puts you in direct contact with light in a similar why to making shadow puppets or playing with your shadow. It is this interaction between us and light which I find interesting and which I'm trying to build into my work.

Two early installations were 'the refractor' and the 'coma maker' which explored simple geometrical optics and were designed to let the viewer change certain parameters of the apparatus. Changing the parameters modulated the light to different effect, creating a basic interaction between the spectator and the installation. Both installations used a direct light source, be it sunlight or an artificial source. camera obscura and an animation titled 'The Inverted Disco Ball' took my investigation into the field of imaging to seek to understand light as image. Most recently (04-04-06) the 'smoke camera',' trace-screen' and 'fan-screen' installations have investigated displaying modulated light as a three dimensional event.

The aim of my studio work has been simply to gain an understanding of the character of light through the making of light modulating machines. The goal of the year is to apply this knowledge to an installation which changes the shape and character of sunlight in space. I also want to make the light modulator respond to the changing sun angle and the spectator. The technical aspects of this installation and conceptual backbone are outlined in the following pages.

Sculpting with light - Molding the Immaterial

Gothic Architecture and the Ephemeral Nature of Light

Gothic architecture is synonymous with light, the minimum of structure to allow as much light in as possible. It is not a clean white light but a glowing, chromatic light, rich and encrusted, alluding to the new Jerusalem: "And I saw the holy city, new jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God... having the glory of God: her light was like unto a stone more precious, as it were a jasper stone..." The stained glass windows of these cathedrals carried imagery and words that depicted stories of the Bible. The arrangements of shapes and elements, all carried embedded meaning to instruct the viewer. Suger described the experience "de materialibus ad immaterialia" or 'from the material to the immaterial', a release into transcendence. King's College, Cambridge illustrates the point.

The ephemeral nature of light lends it to ideas of spirituality and immateriality. Our perception of light creates a literal rendition of this when the eye is exposed to bright light, all else seems to dissolve into whiteness, becoming perceptually immaterial. When a photo is over exposed objects disappear into the whiteness of the light, even massive steels loose there weight in the brightness of the sun. The inverse of this effect, when dark shadows are cast, can appear as objects in themselves even depicting three dimensional space. In '2D-3D Screen' I experimented with shadows creating space.

Moholy Nagy

The making of immateriality was something that fascinated Moholy Nagy who began working with light in the first half of the 1920s. He created camera less photographs (which he called 'photograms') modulating light over photographic paper. Moholy Nagy saw this as the highest form of static light composition allowing him to replace pigment with real light. His later work branched into three dimensions with the use of transparent acrylic which he folded and drilled intuitively. Leda and the Swan and Spirals (both from 1946) where suspended and lit with spotlights to optimise reflections and refractions and allow changing arrangements of light. Movement became pervasive in his work, and served to dematerilise the sculptures by placing emphasis on the play of light rather than the physical object. Light Space Modulator (1922-1930) put more emphasis on the machine with a complex choreography of parts. The machine's movement is mesmerizing in itself but when combined with the movement of light pattern, shadow and bright flashes from the reflective surfaces it is difficult to separate the light from the machine itself. (A blog entry on my visit to the Moholy Nagy exhibition at the Tate Modern can be found here)

Light or Object, Or Both

Moholy Nagy's work expresses the difficulty in working in a medium which is totally ephemeral and immaterial. How the tension between light and object is approached drastically changes the character of the work. Moholy Nagy chooses to express the full workings of the object in the Light Space Modulator. Other artists like Turrell have chosen to hide the apparatus. For 'The Light Inside' (1999) all emphasis is placed on the light itself and the apparatus for creating the light is concealed. The Light Inside becomes a perceptual conundrum as the eye and brain scramble to comprehend whether the coloured light on either side of them is solid matter or immaterial. In hiding the object the work of perceiving becomes harder and the artist can begin to play on that struggle to powerful effect. Turrell has been sued by a woman who fell over when see tried to lean against the wall of light! (Seeing The Light With James Turrell)

I will mention other artists that I aspire to and have drawn inspiration from as I go. Below is a short list of the biggest inspirations for you to get an idea of where I'm coming from. (More information on many of these can be found through the links page of this website)

James Turrell
Olafur Eliasson
Jeppe Hein (interaction)
Joachim Fleisher
Hans Haacke, Condensation Cube 1963, Blue Sail (1964) (natural phenomenon)
Julio Le Parc
Michelangelo Pissoletto
Anish Kapoor
Vasulka Lab
Abelardo Morrell
Rebecca Horn

Daylight - information from the sky