Anyone who says you don’t find straight lines in nature needs to be straightened out. Besides many naturally rectilinear cell and crystal formations, straight lines are to be found in such ubiquitous things as rays of light and gravity’s pull. Since the time of ancient Egypt small weights on strings have been used to mark true vertical lines. Today in place of plump bobs carpenters use laser beams, and it was at a construction site that architect Hiroshi Naito was first taken by the beauty of straight lines of light projected on a rough concrete surface.
When he was invited to do an installation for MOMAT’s current Where Is Architecture? exhibition, he decided to return to this image. In an otherwise completely dark room, 200 straight, parallel red laser beams form a rectangle on the floor. It is a curious property of light that we only see it in what it illuminates. In transit it is invisible, but when it reaches a surface it can appear to have its own mass. Looking at the red lines on the floor it is unclear whether we are seeing an object or image.
Forms appear abruptly from the darkness as people pass through the beams, so the ways in which bodies inform space and architecture are literally brought to light. There is an interplay of two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality as the flat lines respond to the contours of the human forms moving through them, and to fully exploit this several dance performances with JunJun SCIENCE and Hiroaki Umeda are scheduled throughout the exhibition.
= super amazing yes! great blog amelia.
Comment by Teresa Shawn — July 14, 2010 @ 12:35 am