preston swirnoff

score for a light chord

MORTIS STUDIO MAY 6 - JULY 3 2022

artist statement

“History is one long unbroken chain, when you touch one end the other quivers.”- Anton Chekhov
"..if we get a singular transcendental path of light, that could lead to such great dimensions of consciousness..” - Alice Coltrane

My recent work is an exploration of the relationship and contrast between two waves that travel through air at their own speeds and with their own properties: sound and light. I see them as cousins but not siblings. Light has mass, sound does not. Light is visible, sound is not. Light itself cannot be felt, sound vibrates us. But both occupy space and time, both occur naturally in the universe, both can be sensed by most animals (and plants). We’ve been playing with sound and light as far back as we can remember. Their emanations occupy our places of worship, our places of festivity, our bedrooms, our dreams (do you hear sound in your dreams?). Just as sound can be ‘bent’ by reflecting off the walls and floors or seem to have its frequency altered by traveling past us, this installation explores how a single path of light can be bent into a column of multiple unfolding refractions, forming a light chord.

Using less to achieve more, making ‘something out of nothing’, and working with specific locations to create little spaces of awe that challenge our perception, are all values I try to bring into my installations. With hanging sheets of clear plexiglass and single beam lights, I explore optical prism phenomena* as a way to transmute a musical chord into colored light. Instead of relying on effects or digital projections, only the natural properties of light beams refracting off an angled prismatic surface take shape as two columns of undulating light cathedrals in the gallery display window. The conventional process of the musical score is inverted: the sound of a musical chord becomes the score for a chord of light. In my own intuitive chromesthesia**, the primary colors are used to imply the tones in the octave- the darker tones in the bass register, the lighter tones in the treble. Viewers are able to scan a code on the gallery window to listen to the chord, but viewing it silently is fine too. The movement of air, people walking close by, and the hum of the building gently move the hanging plexiglass sheets, causing an outsized response in the light columns on the wall, making them sway and dance in unpredictable ways. I like to think of this as a live cinema in real time. This installation continues my site-specific work with sound, light, and color to create an immersive experience of altered perception: a little shrine of light.

Listen to the musical chord that provides the ‘score’ for the light chord here: Score for a Light Chord

Special thanks to Mortis Studio, Swish Projects, Spenser Little, and Mike Wallace.

_________________________________

*https://www.edmundoptics.in/knowledge-center/application-notes/optics/introduction-to-optical-prisms/

**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromesthesia