At the far end of the balcony overlooking the main hall at Design Miami/Basel in June, there was a small, dark room. In this space of velvety blackness, visitors were confronted with a mesmerising constellation of square coloured lights that were fixed, somehow, onto the wall and changed colour in a programmed sequence, running a gamut of cool or warm hues. Beyond that, however, the installation itself was changing shape as people, now dimly glimpsed, moved the 220 squares of light into different patterns on the wall, creating shapes that were then animated by the changing colours. Then, most curiously of all, if you approached one of these coloured boxes yourself and placed your hand on it – one winking through green, blue and yellow, let us say – and then reached out to touch another box with your other hand, the second box would change colour to match the first. The two boxes were sending messages through your body.
Two kiosks down, there was an entirely white room with what looked like a chandelier hanging in it, consisting of three large cube shapes created by vertical brass rods hung with LED lights. So far, so elegant. But as soon as you made a sound – spoke, clapped your hands, took a step – something remarkable happened: a shiver of light in the shape of a swarm of bees swept through the entire structure, passing from the first cube into the second and on into the third. The more sound you made, the more exuberant and various the movement of the swarm of light. The chandeliers could be made to show a swarm of bright light within a mostly dimmed background structure, or a dark swarm within a bright background. Like the previous installation, it looked like magic: poetic, thoughtful and sensuous.
CC HH UK // Test video shot (unedited) from rAndom International on Vimeo.