Light Transformed is Light is a project that investigates and re-imagines the human relationship to energy. The project is an interactive, self-contained electrical system powered solely and directly by the user and the sun. The audience initially engages with this piece literally as the engine, generating electricity on a stationary bicycle. The visual result of this work is a motion-sensitive video installation comprised of an LED embroidered screen and an LCD projection. The LED's will be controlled by motion sensors illuminating an array of designs in coordination with the user's movement. The video projection will be produced so that it is aware of and enhances the LED designs, while also incorporating imagery which expands upon the themes of the entire piece. For example, everything ranging from time-lapse footage of the sun, circuitry diagrams of the photovoltaic cells, to logos of the multi-national corporations involved in power distribution will be projected. The video will be stored on an altered laptop computer which contains visual programs.
The visual programs will add another layer of interactivity to the installation. There is potential for a nuance of interaction which is difficult to achieve with simpler technologies. For example, while a button can only have one function at a given time, a computer is able to process a huge amount of data in any number of contexts instantly. This instantaneousness is an integral part of the experience of electric technology. The programs will be designed so that a vast array of inputs both expected and unexpected, rational and illogical will result in coherent output. Likewise, while the LED circuits are designed to correspond to the movements of the bicyclist they will respond to any motion within range, such as dancing, jumping, or walking.
The piece opens the door to a far more intimate relationship with electricity than is typically possible in our culture. The audience cannot help but become aware of the entire transformative process of power generation as it unfolds before our eyes and through our actions. Central to the project is the realization that a generator does not generate energy; it transforms energy. In the case of the bicycle generator the transformation is from kinetic energy to electrical energy. Likewise, the photovoltaic array does not create electricity, but transforms light into electrical potential. The entire electrical process: generation, storage, transmission, and use, occurs within this installation. This design tries to eradicate the misunderstanding of electricity as a simple, linear, closed-system. The misconception that: "The power plant makes electricity, we use it, then it is gone," is directly challenged by the project. Ideally, the audience walks away with a conception of electricity as the complex, open, and cyclical process that it truly is.
In this way the installation is an example of the Green Man. A holistic conception of energy is a rebirth and a renewal of our relationship to nature. We become more consistent with our biology as we learn of the careful interdependence of all power systems. Just as our body is in constant flux to maintain homeostasis, and ecosystems exhibit a delicate balance amongst plants, animals, and other organisms, electrons in wires are governed by the same impulse towards harmony.
This idea of the integral struggle for balance has political, social, and spiritual ramifications. As the paradigm shifts from human as creator to human as transformer we are forced to reconsider our ways of being in the world. As creator we stand atop a hierarchy of our own construction; as transformer we are involved in a process far larger than us, which exists independent of our manipulations to it. Thinking in a linear fashion we imagine energy of certain types as useful and energy of different types as waste. When we think cyclically we regard all forms of energy as an integral part of the whole process; there is no waste.