solid light
In a room facing south sunlight enters through the windows, drawing rectangular shapes on the wall. During the day, these travel along the wall in the opposite direction of the sun’s movement. A heliostat, a mirror construction, which follows the movement of the sun, is located outside the room and reflects part of the light back into the room, thus yielding a rectangle of sunlight at a fixed position on the wall. The heliostat compensates the rotation of the earth around its own axis, a standstill is simulated by the fixed light reflexion. In contrast to the first heliostat, a second one, located inside the room, doesn’t try to fix a moving light but to move a fixed light of an artificial light source. The mirror moves according to the local sun directory, exactly like the one outside but with an opposite result. It animates the light of the lamp reflecting and moving it along the wall, which at the same time marks the current sun position.
The project deals with the relationship between space, light and time and especially with the time dimension of light and a space defined through light. Light makes not only objects visible but also time. The light reflexions as an every day experience is so natural that we are not really aware of it. The project manipulates these light shapes, interrupting the natural course of things and the cycling behaviour of light. Dealing with light and time is a contradictory experience. On the one hand we are not able to perceive light because of ist own speed of dispersion. On the other hand, once the light has reached a surface and become a form, we are not aware of it because it hardly moves and appear static to us. Fixing the light and trying to capture the invisible were also the beginning of the photography and film. Since the work develops through time, the reference to the medium of film is very close. The project is another example of what Expanded Cinema and solid light cinema could be.