Lighting and projection have always been considered technical crafts that support the artist, but what about when the lighting and projection are themselves the art, extensions of an artist? That would describe the work of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, who for two decades now has planted motion detectors, searchlights and projection equipment in public plazas, museums and parks around the world that interact with the public.
This fall, the Montreal-based artist is turning people’s voices into colors at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, where his interactive installation Levels of Nothingness will allow people to speak into a microphone connected to a computer that can match their voices’ traits, such as pitch and tone, to certain colors, via custom software on a DMX platform. A network of Vari-Lite VL3000 automated spot luminaires and Panasonic HD projectors around the museum’s theatre will instantly send the corresponding tints shooting around the room.
It’s one of many of Lozano-Hemmer’s creations that utilize computer-controlled lighting and projection technology. For last year’s Underscan, he mounted projectors over a section of London’s Trafalgar Square that were programmed to transmit video images onto the shadows of passersby. The videos, which depicted other people waving or blowing kisses, faded away if ignored. At least 55,000 people stopped by to play with their interactive shadows, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Lozano-Hemmer’s spectacular Vectorial Elevation combined two venues: Zócalo Square in Mexico City and a Web site, with Internet users controlling immense spotlights and creating light sculptures in the skies above the city.
Levels of Nothingness follows a less- nuanced but equally ambitious installation that also used vocal intensity to illuminate spots over Mexico City.
The economics of luminous art is a reflection of that of the art world in general: it’s a tightrope between searching for grant funding and accepting corporate sponsorship and the strings that often come attached to it. Lozano-Hemmer’s installation budgets have ranged widely, from as little as $10,000 for a simple (but clever) show to the $100,000 he expects Levels of Nothingness to cost, through the $250,000 spent for an outdoor show in Manhattan’s Madison Square Park all the way to $1.5 million for the U.K. installation. The numbers often parallel those of top-tier concert tours and corporate events. “It can get expensive,” Lozano-Hemmer says, speaking from his office/studio in Montreal. “With art, the concern for economics is always there.”
The Guggenheim show will have corporate support (Deutsche Bank, with additional support from the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York and the German Consulate General New York), which is what enabled Lozano-Hemmer to go for the Vari-Lite equipment in such abundance. In fact, he adds, it’s necessary to have that kind of support for experimental installations like this one. He has eight full-time staffers working on developing software for lighting and projection control and, in this case, the ability to “listen” to various characteristics of the human voice, including tone, pitch, volume and intensity, and then analyze and interpret them into the colors and forms of light.
There are subtler aspects of funding as well. While the Guggenheim work, like many of his other works, will also allow interaction with the public, the initial speaker whose voice will excite the lights and ensure the Page Six mention is actress Isabella Rossellini, reading an operatic libretto.
I asked Lozano-Hemmer about how he views the commercial potential of his creations. He is, after all, using many of the same pieces of technology that are routinely used to light major events and tours. He has adapted some of his art to commercial ends, for instance, creating the script for a corporate production handled by Scharff-Weisberg where heartbeat sensors used people’s vital signs to drive a light show. In some cases, as with Levels of Nothingness, he’s taking a well-used concept — the use of external signals, such as MIDI, to trigger lighting events — narrowing the trigger down to just the human voice.
All of his permutations of lighting application and control could have commercial possibilities, he agrees, but Lozano-Hemmer says that developing them into actual products requires more capital than he says is available to him at the moment. He’ll continue to collaborate with corporate entities when he feels it’s a good fit for the art, but cautions, “I’m honored when someone is interested in the technology I develop, but I want to retain control of it and how it’s used.” On the other hand, he muses, “With the recession, though, that might change.”
