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December 4, 2010

David Peña: Potential for Darkness


This project was developed as a collaboration with Liliana Sánchez. The work shown here is a first installment, complemented by a different version shown in the exhibition Uncertain Ratio at Imperial College in London.

The initial idea was quite simple: we should propose some kind of black structure that would capture light in a given architectonic space through physical contact with its very source: the lamps. This would explore the energetic dimension of the color black, while also commenting on the physicality of the light sources, objects usually neutralized by the requirements of contemporary functional architecture.

In this installation, black vinyl electrical tape is used to cover half of the total surface of the fluorescent tubes. The average coverage of each tube would be ½, but the deliberately visually complex design is intended to contrast with both the symmetry and regularity of the lamp fixtures (originally intended to achieve an homogeneous distribution of light in the room). In other words, the statistical measurement of the energy is counter-weighted with a non-statistical visual strategy.

In fluorescent lamps, the visible light is produced by the degradation of high-energy UV light into longer-wave visible light. In this perspective, the addition of the black objects would be a second instance of energy degradation to an even “lower” state: radiated heat, also invisible. Some heat is also conducted (even if in an almost symbolic proportion) through the tapes towards the hanging cluster of tape rolls in the opposite end.

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