As Light Goes By

As Light Goes By is a small installation made for the Mix it up! exhibition, which took place at the National Gallery of Denmark in May 2015. The exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Europeana Creative project and the idea was to remix artworks from the National Gallery using their public domain image collection. Altogether 13 artists and designers were invited to create remixes, and the creations were shown next to the original artworks which had inspired them.

My source of inspiration was Vilhelm Hammershøi's (1864-1916) painting called Interior in Strandgade, Sunlight on the Floor (1901). As the name implies, the artwork depicts a peaceful room with a quiet figure and a pattern of sunlight on the floor. While capturing a particular moment, the painting also conveys the passage of time, as one can imagine the light pattern moving along with the sun. Intrigued by this atmosphere, I built an electromechanical machine, which is essentially a simple pop-up version of Hammershøi's room, where a repeating scene takes place. A light coming through the window moves across the floor like a day from dawn to sunset, and when it is night-time, sleepy tones from a music box accompany the silent figure.

The sun in the machine is a high-power LED, which moves along a track, powered by a small gear motor. The track was made using 3D printed parts, metal rods and thin rope. The reciprocating motion is achieved with a bistable relay and microswitches at each end of the track: the two switches are connected to the two coils of the relay. When an end switch is pushed by the LED carriage, the relay changes the state of its output switches. They form a simple H-bridge, which reverses the polarity and thus changes the direction of the motor. The LED is moved then in the other direction until it reaches the other end switch. The other essential parts of the circuit, the LED and another motor which drives the music box, have diodes, so they work only when the motor moves in one of the two directions. When the LED is on, the music box is silent, and vice versa, ad infinitum.

It was a great pleasure to participate in the Mix it up! exhibition, to meet many nice people and to show my little machine next to Hammershøi's original work. As Light Goes By appears also in the book Public Domain published by Migros-Kulturprozent.

See also:

• Photo album of As Light Goes By