ARCHITECTURE
D 95
REMEDY CHANGING THE ATTITUDE UNDERLYING THE ACTION.
OUR USE OF ARTIFICIAL LIGHT OPERATES AT A GLOBAL SCALE, TIED INTO SYSTEMS OF ENERGY, RESOURCES, ECONOMICS. BUT THIS SHOULD NOT BE DIVORCED FROM EXPECTATIONS OF INDIVIDUALS. THE RECONCEPTUALISATION OF LIGHT MUST ATTACK BOTH THE INDIVIDUAL’S (INHERITED) PERCEPTION AND THE GLOBAL SYSTEM SIMULTANEOUSLY.
GLOBAL SYSTEMS. THE GLOBAL NETWORK OF ENERGY DISTRIBUTION AND USE OF ARTIFICIAL LIGHT IS REVEALED BY COMPOSITE SATELLITE IMAGES OF THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH AT NIGHT. FLUCTUATING DENSITIES OF LIGHT SPILL INTO THE NIGHT-SKY REVEAL THE LAND MASSES AND CONCENTRATIONS OF DEVELOPMENT. IT IS A POWERFUL IMAGE BUT A CONCEIT: THE IMAGE IS GENERATED FROM NUMEROUS TILES WHICH ARE STITCHED TOGETHER ACROSS SPACE AND TIME. TWENTY-HOURS WORTH OF NIGHT PHOTOGRAPHS ARE COLLAPSED INTO ONE FRAME TO PICTURE THE WHOLE EARTH’S SURFACE, UNWRAPPED AND PROJECTED. BUT THIS IMAGE PROVIDES ONE SCALE OF ‘SITE’ WHICH CAN BE OPERATED UPON: SUBTRACTION AS CREATION. IN MICHAEL HEIZER’S ‘DOUBLE NEGATIVE’ A POSITIVE VOLUME OF SPACE IS GENERATED BY EXCAVATING ITS NEGATIVE FROM THE ROCK ON TWO SIDES OF A CLEFT IN A MESA. IN RICHARD LONG’S ‘WALKED LINE’ THE ARTWORK AS ‘THING’ IS GENERATED BY MATTING DOWN OR WEARING AWAY, RATHER THAN BY THE ADDITION OF ANY NEW MATERIAL. RATHER THAN SEEING THE ABSENCE OF ELECTRIC LIGHT ON DEMAND AS A PROBLEM WE CAN THINK OF IT AS A POSITIVE THING: SUBTRACTION AS CREATION.
FIG. 2
H