Mark Esper

Materials: polycarbonate plastic, electric motors, light emitting diodes, infrared lamp, electronic circuits.

Installation size: Vanes: 82" wide (each). Three-vane assembly requires: 9' across x 4' deep. Lamp: 15' from vanes.

Enlightenment is an interactive installation that manipulates light, creating inverse shadows. It explores several aspects of perception and self-perception. The actual term, Enlightenment, comes from the humanistic and scientific movement that began in the eighteenth century. Also in this work, the idea of personal enlightenment is made physical, a means of contemplation.
Enlightenment presents a situation where a viewer enters a dark room. On one side of the room, a lamp shines invisible infrared light. At the other end of the room, are three sets of three spinning vanes, much like airplane propellers. Made of clear polycarbonate plastic, the vanes are driven by electric motors at a 140 rotations/min. Along the length of each vane at intervals of one inch are set a row of identical electrical circuits. Each circuit includes an infrared sensor and a light emitting diode. When the sensor sees infrared light, the light emitting diode is off. When the infrared light is blocked from the sensor, when it is in shadow, the light emitting diode glows brightly. The front set of vanes has blue diodes, the center set of vanes has red diodes, and farthest one from the viewer has yellow diodes.
As the viewer enters the dark room, in which the vanes are spinning, he/she blocks some of the infra-red light from reaching the vanes, and in doing so, the work lights up, because a shadow is cast on the spinning vanes, revealing the silhouette aspect of the viewer. This shadow is seen as three colors of light against dark rather than as dark against light.

Creating a pun with the term Enlightenment, the work lights up, and literally so does the viewer. The light shadow is seen differently by the one who is casting the shadow than it is seen by anyone else. The person casting the shadow sees it as a cohesive image. Others viewing it see the separate layers of the image, suggesting that we see ourselves in a different way than others see us. So, the idea of personal enlightenment is made physical. A reference can be seen also to Plato’s shadow on the cave wall in his meditation on reality, but in this work, it is a shadow of light.