Gravity of Light

Upon Courtney's suggestion, she, Dave, and I went to the Gravity of Light visual art presentation this week during lunch. It was set up in an old warehouse that Dave and I both bike past every day on our way to work. The artists, from Brooklyn, set up several large scale pieces along the walls of the Pipe Building and illuminated the room with the blindingly stark light of a 50,000 W carbon arc lamp.

The carbon arc lamp itself was fascinating. Basically, the mechanism brings two charged carbon elements together and pulls them apart, creating an arc in the space in between. The process burns off some of the material, so the mechanism slowly brings the rods closer and closer to keep the arc distance approximately the same over time. The light it cast was brilliantly white and caused amazingly sharp-edged shadows throughout the warehouse. It was a good experience.