Commissioned by the London Design Festival at the Victoria & Albert Museum
Designed in collaboration with Felix de Pass and Michael Montgomery, 2014
Due to the light sensitivity of the medieval textiles on display, the V&A Tapestries Gallery is one of the darkest spaces in the museum. This site specific installation consisted of a large slowly-turning ‘rotary machine’, hovering in the centre of the gallery. As the face of the machine revolved it passed through a light source consisting of over 700 individually programmed LED’s that charged its surface, which in turn emitted this energy as after glow. The continual revolution of the machine created a perpetual ebb and flow of light-patterns travelling across the structure. The rich layering effect and form of mark making played with the memory of the ceramic-based phosphorescent material, Super-LumiNova found on the face and dials of wrist watches. The title of the installation, Candela, comes from the standard unit of luminous intensity: a common candle emits light with a luminous intensity of roughly one candela.
Read more about the project in the links below:
“Making History: our ten highlights from London Design Festivals” – It’s Nice That, 23 September 2015
“A mesmerising experiment with light” – Creative Review, 18 September 2014
Image 1 by Ed Reeve
Film by James Aiken