Siphonophoria: The Luminous Lure, 2015
LTDC was invited to participate in Seattle Art Museum's Second Annual Lights Festival with a participatory art installation. The brief was to create an art activity that incorporated light: reflection, shadow, illumination, etc. SAM was particularly excited about our participation because our work has been responsive to site and the environment.
For our project we took inspiration from bioluminescent sea creatures who generate light in the darkness of the deep sea, particularly siphonophores.. A siphonophore is a bioluminescent ocean creature often found at great depths. It resembles and acts as a single organism, but is in fact a community of highly specialized individuals acting in concert to benefit the whole.
This idea led us to create, essentially, an enormous Light Bright, which was shaped like a giant cephalopod. The form was illuminated from the inside with 500+ 3" holes drilled into it. Each hole was covered with a dark circle of paper. Participants were invited to create their own "light signature" on a piece of vellum using a select color palette. They then chose a location for their piece, remove the dark paper covering and affix their work to the dynamic and every brightening communal sculpture.
+ plywood panels, flat black paint, black construction paper, vellum, tissue paper, markers, stamps and ink