Love and Light

If love were to be represented as a color, what color would it be? If love were to be shown as a point of light, how bright would it shine? Would it look focused or unfocused? Would it flash? And if so, how fast? Just as mankind has tried since the invention of writing and language to put into words what love is, it is equally difficult to translate love into color or light. Love is deeply personal and can be expressed in an infinite number of ways. Love is elusive.

"Love and Light" delves into this elusive world of love through expressions of color and light that are partly formed in the viewer's mind's eye. In this way, each viewer forms their own unique and personal representation of love. "Love and Light" plays with the optical phenomenon of the "afterimage," which occurs when a viewer stares at a bright source of light or image, and that image is carried over when the viewer shifts their gaze.

Inspired by the mating ritual of fireflies and the high-speed motion photography experiments of Eadweard Muybridge, "Love and Light" is a visual and conceptual mash-up of the two. It uses as a launching point the flashing underbellies of fireflies, which they use to attract the opposite sex, and combines that with the staccato-like movements of electronic dance, to produce a visual collage of color and light that is unique for each viewer. It is through this uniqueness that a representation of love might be achieved.

One of the most fascinating sights in nature is found in Southeast Asia, along river banks where tens of thousands fireflies flash on and off in near perfect synchronization. In the mating ritual of fireflies, mates with the longest flashes attract more females than those with a shorter flash. A male firefly’s brief life span of 21 days makes all the more poignant the transitory nature of life and love, as consummation must occur quickly within a limited time-span, or may not occur at all.

“Love and Light” also investigates the perception of color. When we view on screen with red light, our eyes, as a reaction, produce the complimentary color, green. There is a delay of 10-15 seconds, and then vision slowly fades into white. The burn image is an afterimage left by staring at the screen for a certain amount of time. By playing with the afterimage, each viewer invites their own experience into this piece based on his/her own perception of colors, similar to the incredibly individual experience of love.

**Advancing the Discipline through Theory and Innovation taught by David Whitcraft in Summer 2009 (8 weeks session)