Darkness is a space

Mirror and Pattern

Cosmos Simulacrum

"Child-Like"

Perspectival space represented as privileging the horizontal at the expense of the vertical- rational space is reorganized.

Refraction: "The bending of a wave, such as a light or sound wave, as it passes from one medium to another medium of different density. The change in the angle of propagation depends on the difference between the index of refraction of the original medium and the medium entered by the wave, as well as on the frequency of the wave." (per the American Heritage Science Dictionary).


Materiality is reintroduced - each material has a specific index of refraction (a property of that material), for example, a vacuum has an n-value of 1, for water, n=1.333, diamond, n=2.419, pyrex, n=1.47, etc. for a set wavelength of light equaling 589.29 nanometers.

Noise-barrier design: 1970's engineering studies focused extensively on refraction as a method of designing highways' borders with their environment.

Light and Mist

Colored Metals

Experiment #5

Corresponding lighing with sound

Abelardo Morell

Vera Lutter

Infinite Passage

This effect is produced by filming a TV screen or computer monitor while simultaneously uploading the footage (into iMovie for example). An infinite tunnel or passage way appears to recede into the screen.

Mosque at Cordoba Study

For a building to be motionless is the exception: our pleasure comes from moving about so as to make the building move in turn, while we enjoy all these combinations of its parts. As they vary, the column turns, depths recede, galleries glide: a thousand visions escape.

Paul Valery, The Method of Leonardo

The Mosque at Cordoba is an interesting example of a field condition. The myriad of columns (over 900) dematerializes the lateral walls enclosing the prayer hall and also lends the space a sense of movement, which is enhanced by the body's movement through the space. See Stan Allen's article, "Field Conditions," in Points+Lines (1985).





The following images and video are various studies using the Mosque at Cordoba as a model. The idea is to produce a sense of movement without literal movement of the objects. Light and body/camera movement produce the effects.


















Video: Movement Simulated with Light



Video: Movement Simulated with Camera (as stand in for the body)