An investigation into the use of light in art from stained glass windows to fluorescent tubes

Friday, June 09, 2006

Bottle lights


Making lights from recycled plastic bottles...

David Bachelor made a fantastic chandelier for the Bloomberg Space - featured earlier on in this blog. I wanted to make one for myself to see the glow. Bachelor used 500 empty plastic containers of various sizes and colours - none of the literature says what kind of light he used, but I think each bottle had a pendant light with regular bulb and a very long flex that wound around a column and was plugged into a huge bank of power points on the floor. The whole thing was two stories high, maybe three including the space beneath.

This is a drawing from my sketchbook that shows how it was installed...

So I wished to make something for myself - I have been saving bottles for months now and it has become clear to me that only a very few are perfect for creating light fittings. Most are too dense and therefore opaque, or, more likely, too thin and therefore allow too much light and do not give the 'glow'.

Then there's the kind of light to use - I have tried fibre optics (too feeble), fairy lights (also too feeble except in one case where they worked well), ordinary bulbs (too hot), and finally settled on a low wattage candle bulb as shown in a previous post with the unsuccessful green bottle.

Finally I emptied a huge bottle of bleach and set about making another light - hurrah, success - the right amount of 'glow' and no problems with over heating etc. Here it is... [Oh no it isn't... Blogger won't let me post just now! I'll try again at another time, perhaps Blogger is suffering from heat exhaustion!]

Now obviously the effect that Bachelor achieved is much greater, more impressive than my one light, but it is, I think, in direct proportion to the number of bottles used. I am not always an advocate of size - in fact sometimes I think that making large works is a cop out because anything can look impressive with scale, but in this case the size is absolutely vital. I am happy to have made one light and do not need to create a larger piece, after all it is David Bachelor's idea not mine (and it would be hugely expensive), but I found it satisfying.

Next I turned back to the set of fairy lights that I had found for 50p in the Charity shop in Cushendall... Very small probiotic yogurt pots with the plastic labelling still applied did the trick - again lots of trial and error before finding this particular type. And this time very cheap!!!

posted by Lynda Cornwell @ 12:00 pm 0 comments

An electrifying experience

So armed with a fluorescent tube and a box full of low voltage long life bulbs I went in search of a significant electrical field to try to witness them powered by the electricity in the air.

I remembered years ago seeing a huge sub-station a few miles away - can you believe that back then the school children used to go to a woodland learning centre that was sited right next to this station? This sub-station is so large that it is shown on the Multimap section for the area. So my son and I set off in search of it.

Of course the actual station is off limits but there is a footpath that skirts round it - so we tramped through the beautiful woodland towards the pylons that were clearly visible. We were able to approach amazingly close to this place, where death warnings were posted all along the fence.

The sound of so much electricity being fed along the power lines was deafening and my whole body was tingling - not sure if my hair was standing on end but it could have been!

We 'planted' my small fluorescent bulb under some of the power cables to see if it would light up, but sadly it didn't. There are so many potential reasons why this did not happen - the end of the bulb was not in close enough contact with the ground, the tube was not long enough to create the right conditions, the huge power source in the station was setting up multi directional electrical fields, the ground itself may have been charged so there was no potential difference between overhead and the ground....

Faced with so many variables we could not find a suitable solution - I have emailed Richard Box to see if he is willing to share his knowledge and help me track the right conditions.

Everything about that experience was electrifying and very scary. The fluorescent bulb itself is dangerous because the longer it is the more fragile and it is filled with carcinogenic material.

I may not wish to follow up with this, but I'll see if Richard can help.

These images may show the nature of the place...





How puny is this? And it didn't even light up!!!

posted by Lynda Cornwell @ 11:27 am 0 comments

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Bibliography

The actual list of references would be huge but these are the most important sources of my research.

Borchardt-Hume, Achim, Albers and Moholy-Nagy, From the Bauhaus to the New World, 2006, London: Tate Publishing, 1-85437-638-1

Butterfield, Jan, The Art of Light and Space, 1993, New York: Abbeville Press, 1-55859-272-5

Friedman, Martin, Hockney Paints the Stage, 1983, London: Thames & Hudson, 0-7287-0447-1
Govan, Michael & Bell, Tiffany, Dan Flavin: A Retrospective, 2004, New York: Dia Art Foundation, 0-944521-50-9

Hess, Thomas B & Ashbery, John (ed), Light: From Aten to Laser, 1969, New York: The Macmillan Company

Keller, Max, Light Fantastic, 1999, Munich, London, New York: Prestel Verlag, 3-7913-2162-5

Nesbitt, Judith & Watkins, Jonathan , Days Like These, Tate Triennial Exhibition of Contemporary British Art, 2003, London: Tate Publishing, 1-85437-437-5

Osborne, June, John Piper and Stained Glass, 1997, Stroud: Sutton Publishers, 0-7509-1088-7

Pilbrow, Richard, Stage Lighting, 1970, Great Britain: Studio Vista Ltd, 0-289-79763-2

Rothko, Mark, Exhibition catalogue from the National Gallery of Art, 1998, Washington: National Gallery of Art , 0-300-08193-6

Wilmerding, John, American Light, 1980,Washington: Harpers & Row, 0-06-438940-5

Wolff, John, Light Fantastic, 1977, London: Bergstrom + Boyle Books Limited, 0-903767-17-1

Some of the websites accessed:

http://www.mudam.lu/shrigley/shrigley_on-off.htm, David Shrigley , Artist website http://ledartist.com/index.html, Teddy Lo, Online led art
http://www.gasworks.org.uk/varts/iva_nav/, Ivan Navarro, Gasworks exhibition
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/ivan_navarro.htm, Ivan Navarro, Saatchi Gallery
www.zen54564.zen.co.uk/r/press.htm, Richard Box, Artist website
http://www.pureenergysystems.com/news/exclusive/wireless_transformer/index.html, Pure Energy Systems Network Inc., Organisation fostering renewable energy
http://www.colourscape.org.uk, Colourscape Org, An experience of coloured rooms and light http://www.hayward.org.uk/, Hayward Gallery, Dan Flavin exhibition
http://about.bloomberg.com/about/ourco/space/index.html, Bloomberg Space, Backdrop exhibition including David Bachelor’s Candelabra 3
http://bovardstudio.com/gallery/contemporary.aspx, Bovard Studio, Stained Glass Maker’s studio with sample images
http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/prints_books/saintjohnsbible/index.html, V&A Museum, St Johns Illuminated Bible http://www.saintjohnsbible.org/

http://www.mi.sanu.ac.yu/vismath/russ/index.html, Irene Rousseau, Thesis: Spectral Light as Sculptured Space

http://www.whitecube.com/html/artists/cee/cee_frset.html, Cerith Wyn Evans at White Cube Gallery


Key exhibitions visited with reference to light...


Dan Flavin, 19 January – 2 April 2006, Hayward Gallery

Backdrop, 20 January – 18 March 2006, Bloomberg Space

The St John's Bible, 31 January - 1 May 2006, V&A Museum

Paul Hosking: New Works, March 2006, Fred [London] Ltd

Ellsworth Kelly, 18 March - 21 May 2006 , The Serpentine Gallery

Albers and Moholy-Nagy Exhibition, 9 March – 4 June 2006, Tate Modern


posted by Lynda Cornwell @ 5:22 pm 0 comments

Still some things to do...

Not sure how much of my TO DO list I'll manage to finish...

I want to make a set of bottle lights out of a string of 'fairy' lights I found in a charity shop, plant some flourescent bulbs in a field beneath an electric substation a few miles away - for this I need company, not something I want to do alone in the dark, and also use the dozens of green bottles that I have collected to create something interesting that light can pass through - a window? a screen? not sure yet....

Then I wanted to use deflected light to create a colour field in semi-darkness - all a bit ambitious really for such a small module as Cultural Context of Drawing, but whatever I can accomplish in the remaining week will be enough.

posted by Lynda Cornwell @ 5:15 pm 0 comments