LFS1 is an installation originating from the two artists’ ongoing research into dynamic architectures composed of solid and ephemeral media. Innovative and antiquated technologies meet in the cloud of light and sound generating modules.
Piezo-electric sound sheet envelopes Nixie neon tubes. An embedded signal generator drives both of them so that the waveforms emanate from the modules as both sound and light. The signal excites the piezo sound sheet, causing air pressure variations perceived as sound. Synchronously the signal modulates the extension of the Nixie tubes. This neon plasma tube is an analog medium subjected to the complex laws of particle physics and electro-magnetism. It is an imprecise, unreliable and now disused 1950’s display technology that is applied and exploited here exactly for this specific, unpredictable character.
While each module operates independently from the others, the light planes
scanning the space act as conductors of the atmospheric composition. When probed by a light beam a module turns on. Probed a second time it turns off, and so on. The choreography of scanning beams makes the field of light and sound morph in space and contrasts the warm neon glow with washes of cold LED light.
Both a control signal and an aesthetic element, the light projections are exemplary of the artists’ treatment of media as building blocks for ephemeral, immersive architectures where the territories of digital and analog media, solid matter and sensory experience fade into each other.