Phosphor

Memory

The light source, which acts as the pen, is a single ultraviolet laser beam controlled by a computer program written by the artist. The laser excites phosphorescent “afterglow” pigments, producing vivid glowing traces that gradually darken over several minutes while being painted over again and again. The canvas retains a fading memory of time.

Landscape

At the hidden digital core of the installation, a piece of code represents an imaginary landscape: a 3D model of a non-existing world, a mountain range made of data.

The laser beam draws the result of placing a drop of water at a random position in this landscape and calculating the best path downhill to the coast—the edges of the canvas.

While doing so, it slightly alters the mountain’s shape, in a rough approximation of effects of erosion, resulting in different trajectories as time passes.

Divine Intervention

The model is not perfect; it needs divine intervention to remain interesting. At times, the paths of the virtual water drops are artificially disturbed, turning straight lines into clouds of points: a small thunderstorm which produces complex visual shapes and accelerates the process of erosion.

At other times, the movement follows a grid, inspired by large-scale man-made structures embedded in our landscapes, such as endless progressions of oil pumps in the desert.

The only pre-programmed elements are the basic behaviour and a set of random probabilities that govern certain events. The creative process lies in tuning these values: defining movement speeds and the degree of inherent randomness. Once this is done, the world is left to itself, beyond the artist’s control. The artist becomes merely an observer just like the audience.