Project Name: Light Field

Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Scope: Installation at Harvard Graduate School of Design, 2008

For the installation at Harvard, we developed a field of lightboxes to illuminate content for the New Trajectories exhibition. The GSD's gallery is a linear hall that connects the auditorium, library, cafe and presentation rooms. To maintain an idea of a gallery without proctors or guides, we developed a curatorial system of cognition based on oscillations of light. Different pulses of light were isolated that would suggest groupings of similar objects, or promote a non- sequential viewing. This was further reinforced with permission from Harvard to turn off overhead lighting and allow only illumination from the LightField. Each lightbox was able to sense its own audience, to adjust its light levels based on that proximity, and to know its settings within the entire field. This local and global identification allowed us to play with behaviours that may subtly signal viewers - through changes in light levels as well as perceptible oscillations - to understand a curated organization within the entire gallery space.

credits:

Sigurdur Orn Adalgeirsson

Exhibitions and Publications Department, GSD