body of light

Cast glass prism, steel collar, truss, HID lamps. 2023
Prism: 115cm x 52.5cm x 26.5cm. Projection areas: ~35-150m2.

Body of Light comprises a suspended hand-cast, optical glass prism punctuated by two beams of light at precise angles so as to project spectral rainbow phenomena into the surrounding environment. The composition is achieved through precision-engineered, geometric optics, producing a kaleidoscopic figure of light consisting of spectral bands projected onto the surrounding mist, trees and water below. By encapsulating this confluence of atmospheric optics and geometric composition—from a double rainbow to the catoptrics on the surface of the water—the work elaborates and reappropriates Newton’s classic prism experiment, so as to re-animate a mythic reading of the rainbow.

Naturally occurring rainbows in the atmosphere have a particular figure, consisting of a primary rainbow with a dark exterior band separating a secondary (inverted) bow and supernumerary arcs below the primary rainbow. This figure, revealed by geometry, is also defined by the axis of a line passing from the sun, through the pupil of the observing eye, and extending out into the surrounding atmosphere, meaning that the phenomena is unique to each viewers perspective, arising at the meeting of light and dark and at the boundary of interior and exterior space. Hence the mythic reading of rainbow apparitions as signifying a kind of bridge or intermediary between two worlds, and corresponding to the inner lights of the meditative traditions, to which the artwork alludes.