Light collage

"Peaceable Kingdom" by Austine Wood Comarow

Austine Wood Comarow started working in her original polarized light art medium in 1967.
She creates interactive and kinetic or morphing figurative images using a combination of polarized filters and special birefringent materials. When displayed in special kinetic light boxes they change in ways invocative of passing time: a sun setting, seasons change, people age.
The remarkable art requires cutting thousands of tiny pieces of clear cellulose and other optically active materials and laminating them onto a clear matrix such as acrylic or glass (polarized light collage). The resulting images can be displayed in motorized light boxes so they continually change, or in an interactive format so the viewer activates the image with a polarizing viewer.

Talking about the weather...

The weather project by Olafur Eliasson was installed at the London's Tate Modern in 2003 as part of the popular Unilever series. The installation filled the open space of the gallery's Turbine Hall.

This hugely popular exhibit explored that most British of obsessions, the weather. What looks like a complete Sun is actually only half a circle, reflected by a mirror running the entire length of the high ceiling.
The light Eliasson's created is really interesting: with monochromatic yellow light eliminating all colour and spurts of 'mist' adding to the atmosphere, the building was transformed into an ethereal and disconcerting beauty.
Generally used in street lighting, mono-frequency lamps emit light at such a narrow frequency that colours other than yellow and black are invisible, thus transforming the visual field around the sun into a vast duotone landscape. (From Tate Modern: About the installation)

The light and dark side of Caravaggio

Caravaggio, "The Calling of Saint Matthew" (1599-1600)

Chiaroscuro in art is characterized by weak contrasts between light and dark. This tecnique was practiced long before Caravaggio came on the scene, but he was the one who made the technique definitive, darkening the shadows and transfixing the subject in a blinding shaft of light.


In "The calling of Saint Matthew", the beam of light, which enters the picture from the direction of a real window, expresses in the blink of an eye the conversion of St Matthew.