All light

Light and Space Yesterday and Today

In the foreground is a professional spotlight. It is directed at the wall straight ahead. A mirror-like rectangle hangs on the wall, with an orange semicircle visible in its lower third. A yellow semicircle adjoins the lower edge of the rectangle. The entire room appears to be illuminated in red.
Olafur Eliasson, Red window semicircle, 2008, Installation view: Studio Olafur Eliasson, Berlin, 2008, Photo: Jens Ziehe, Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin, © 2008 Olafur Eliasson

Light is more than just brightness – it creates atmosphere, changes spaces and shapes how we see the world. Light is the basis of life and symbolizes knowledge and truth, spirituality and hope. But light can also be the material of art.

“All Light. Light and Space Yesterday and Today” focuses on the Californian Light and Space Movement of the 1960s. In Light and Space, light is used as an artistic material in a completely new way. Artists in this movement developed a fundamentally new concept of light, space and perception.

The exhibition provides insights into the development of the artistic use of light from the visionary experiments of the 1960s to the present day. Historical positions and current works by contemporary artists are in dialog.

The architecture of the Kunsthalle Bielefeld is part of this dialog: With its clear design language, distinctive lighting and the interplay between inside and outside, it opens up a space in which light is not merely a visual phenomenon. Light is a material, a tool of perception and a critical medium at the same time.

Artists: Angela Bulloch, Mary Corse, Olafur Eliasson, Nancy Holt, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, Mischa Kuball, Nicole Miller, Tatsuo Miyajima, Helen Pashgian

This exhibition is presented togehter with Shedding Light(s) – A view into the Collection #11.

In this exhibition there are individual works with flickering or bright light (incl. stroboscope up to approx. 3-30 Hz). This can be stressful for people with photosensitivity, migraines or sensory sensitivity. The areas in question can be avoided during the visit.

Floor plan of the 1st floor of the Kunsthalle Bielefeld. An area with flickering light is marked with a colored dot.
Colored dot = area with flickering light on the second floor.
Floor plan of the 2nd floor of the Kunsthalle Bielefeld. Colored dots indicate areas with flickering light.
Colored dots = areas with flickering light on the second floor.

The exhibition is sponsored by

Black and white logo, the name of the institution flush left and the coat of arms of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia flush right.
Black and white logo, left-aligned first the logo of the Sparkasse, a thick S with a dot above it. To the right of that, written in sans serif: Stiftung der Sparkasse Bielfeld.

Media guide

You are looking at a large dark blue square with many small points of light.

What you see here is a special representation of the starry sky. Each LED light point represents a real star. But the arrangement of the stars is different from what we see from Earth. The artist transports us into space. She used real data from space research and a computer program. She has converted the data into precise grids of LED dots. In controlled sequences, these points of light light up, flicker and disappear.

The gentle flashing is similar to the way starlight comes to us through the atmosphere, flickering as it does so.

Angela Bulloch created this work. She has been working with light and technology since the late 1980s. The special thing about it is that light is no longer merely indicated by color – as has been the case in painting for centuries. Instead, it generates real light through programmed signals, through digital codes that make LED lights shine.

With its square shape, “Monoceros to Bellatrix Blue” is deliberately reminiscent of a famous painting: the first version of Kazimir Malevich’s “Black Square” from 1915. It shows a black square on a white surface. This work was long regarded as the so-called “zero point of painting”. This meant that representational art ended here and a completely new direction began: abstract art. Today we know that other artists, such as Hilma af Klint, had already taken paths into abstraction earlier. Nevertheless, Malevich’s “Black Square” remains an icon of modernism. It symbolizes the idea that art no longer has to represent things. It can also just be about sensations, shapes and colors themselves. When you stand in front of the black square, you should not recognize things, but only feel them – peace, vastness or perhaps even a kind of eternity.

Angela Bulloch takes up this idea. But it fills the simple, geometric form with digital aesthetics, as we know it from screens. What does it trigger in you when you look at the gentle flashing?

 

Text: Matthias Albrecht
Audio by: Matthias Albrecht
Recording, editing and technical realization: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digitale Museumspraxis Kunsthalle Bielefeld)

If you stand in the sculpture park or in front of the main entrance to the Kunsthalle and look up, you can see the work of Mischa Kuball. The lettering “my absence is your presence” lights up there – but it is difficult to see it completely. Depending on where you are standing, you will either see “my absence is” facing the sculpture park or “your presence” facing the street. This is no coincidence.

Mischa Kuball has been working with light since the 1970s. He is interested in light as a communicative and political tool. His installations often make social structures visible or question who is allowed to be present in public space – and who is not. With “my absence is your presence”, Kuball opens up a space for reflection in the city. The sentence means: “My absence is your presence”. The corner arrangement means you have to move around to fully appreciate the work.
This strategy makes you aware of your own position in the room. Your movement becomes an active part of the work. The tension between presence and absence is not only conveyed through the glowing words. It can be experienced physically. At the same time, the installation raises questions: Who is absent? Who is present? In public space, these questions are never neutral – they always touch on issues such as visibility, participation and social power.

Kuball uses light as a language that makes architectural structures and cultural codes equally visible. The work is particularly effective in the evening or at dusk. The Kunsthalle itself then becomes a shining symbol in the urban space, inviting people to reflect on what is there – and on what is missing.

Text: Matthias Albrecht
Audio by: Nadine Kleinken
Recording, editing and technical realization: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digitale Museumspraxis Kunsthalle Bielefeld)

You are standing in front of a white painting – and depending on how you move, it changes before your eyes. Not because the picture itself changes, but because light becomes the material here. The secret is tiny glass beads that Mary Corse has worked into the white paint. They function like millions of tiny mirrors and reflect the light directly back to your eyes. You know the effect from reflective stripes on the road, for example.

Depending on where you stand, how bright the room is, from which angle you look – the painting always responds differently. Sometimes it appears dark, sometimes light, sometimes it even seems to have depth. It becomes clear: You are not a passive spectator. You create the picture too! Each of your movements activates new effects. The artwork literally exists in your perception.

Corse has been experimenting with light as an independent medium since the late 1960s. She is one of the few women in the Light and Space Movement, a Californian art movement that not only wanted to depict light, but to work with it directly. Unlike her male colleagues, however, Corse never abandoned painting. Instead, she found new possibilities in painting and transformed them. She wanted the painting itself to seem to generate light – to bring light directly to you. She thus poses a classic question: What is painting actually? With Mary Corse, it becomes an encounter with light.

Text: Matthias Albrecht
Audio by: Nadine Kleinken
Recording, editing and technical realization: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digitale Museumspraxis Kunsthalle Bielefeld)

Look at this picture – its yellow structure on the surface. This is no ordinary painting. Craig Kauffman has done something special here. He did not simply apply paint to a canvas, but experimented with plastic: The entire work is cast in plastic. The material appears light, almost floating. If you walk around the room and move around, the picture changes constantly. The light refracts differently on the corrugated surface, depending on the angle from which you are looking.

This is Kauffman’s transition from flat painting to the spatial. In this work, he still has one foot in the traditional pictures – it hangs on the wall like a painting. But with the other foot, he is already stepping into the world of sculpture. The surface has volume, depth and form. It jumps out of the plane. That is exactly what is so exciting: This wall relief is something new between painting and sculpture.

If you look around the room, you will immediately notice where the journey is heading. The works fill the space, they transform it, they surround you. Unlike a traditional painting could. Kauffman’s “Untitled” stays closer to the wall surface, but the organic forms, the flowing lines, the translucent plastic material – all this prepares the way. It’s like stepping between two worlds. The beginning of a movement that would fundamentally change the art of light.

Text: Matthias Albrecht
Audio by: Matthias Albrecht
Recording, editing and technical realization: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digitale Museumspraxis Kunsthalle Bielefeld)

Take a look through the metal tube – do you notice how your perception changes?
That is the basic idea behind Nancy Holt’s “Locators”. The artist used them to create unusual visual devices that draw our attention to vision itself. Holt said that she wants to provoke the “concretization of perception” by inviting people to “really intensely perceive what they see”.

Two different light sources meet in this installation: an artificial spotlight and natural sunlight. Both are guided by the metal tube. If you look through it, you will experience a fascinating interplay. The artificial light remains constant – reliable, unchanging. Sunlight, on the other hand, is diffuse in the morning, intense at midday and golden in the evening. These two lights overlap, shift, separate – depending on how bright it is outside and how the sun is moving. The tension between variability and constancy is at the heart of the work.

Nancy Holt wants you to realize that even with a fixed visual axis, seeing is not a passive process. Every time you look through the tube, you experience something new.

Text: Matthias Albrecht
Audio by: Nadine Kleinken
Recording, editing and technical realization: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digitale Museumspraxis Kunsthalle Bielefeld)

Additional video material: The artist herself about her work

 

Transcript of the audio:

A glowing glass sphere – warm, yellow-golden, mysterious. As if the light were radiating outwards from within, as if the artist herself had captured the glow in the material. She does not simply create enlarged glittering glass marbles in which the light refracts through framed objects. No – something completely different is being created here. The light seems to shine from the material itself. The artist talks about similar visual experiences she had in her childhood, in the pools of seawater that are left behind at low tide:

“I can remember looking into the pools and seeing things. And then either the tide or the wind or my submerged finger would cause a ripple on the surface and then all the light at the bottom would start to move.”

Helen Pashgian works with cast synthetic resin, which she processes with extreme precision. She pours the liquid material into carefully stacked layers, each one a risky act – because every air bubble, every impurity means total failure. The result is art that combines minimalism and meditative depth: reduced form, intense light effect, total concentration on the essentials. The artist develops her techniques over decades, often in isolation and without institutional support. Her spheres, discs and ovoid shapes are still, luminous objects that put our eyes and minds in a state of calm contemplation.

Pashgian’s approach is similar to the work of other pioneers of the Light and Space movement. They also use industrial materials to not only reflect light, but to transform it and make it tangible.

Text: Matthias Albrecht
Audio by: Nadine Kleinken
Recording, editing and technical realization: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digitale Museumspraxis Kunsthalle Bielefeld)

What is that? A shimmering, translucent disk – or is it simply light and shadow? With his disc, Robert Irwin turns precisely this question into a work of art. The thin acrylic panel appears to float in space. Their edges dissolve depending on how the light falls and from which angle you look at them.

Robert Irwin’s great artistic concern is evident here: he turns your vision itself into a work of art. The disc is not so important – much more important is your perception, your movement in space. Irwin says: “Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees” – when you really look, you forget the object you are looking at and concentrate on the pure experience of seeing. This changes your viewing experience. You become an active participant instead of a passive spectator.

Robert Irwin was one of the most influential artists of the Light and Space movement that emerged in Southern California in the 1960s. Artists there began not only to depict light, but to work with it as they would with oil paints or marble. They used new industrial materials to research how perception works.

Irwin began as a painter, but quickly realized that the flat canvas was not enough for him. With works such as the Disc, he abandoned traditional painting altogether and worked with light, space and the viewer’s body. His questions were those of a scientist: How does the human eye perceive light? How do colors and shadows influence our orientation?

With his installations, Irwin invited people to consciously experience the space. That was a completely new idea in the 1960s.

Text: Matthias Albrecht
Audio by: Matthias Albrecht
Recording, editing and technical realization: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digitale Museumspraxis Kunsthalle Bielefeld)

In front of you, you will see an installation of 48 illuminated cubes – so-called Pixel_Boxes. They are constructed as a wall and light up in constantly changing colors. However, the play of colors is no coincidence, but a highly condensed film scene.

Angela Bulloch used the last eight minutes and thirteen seconds of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 film “Zabriskie Point” for this work. In this famous scene, we see the main character standing in the desert in front of a modernist house that explodes. Bulloch has broken down this dramatic explosion into individual digital stills. However, each of its Pixel_Boxes only shows a single pixel from one of these images.

What lasts over eight minutes in the film is condensed here into an abstract choreography of color and light. The drama of the film sequence dissolves into a pulsating, almost meditative play of colors. You can guess the original story, but it is transformed into an experience of rhythm and intensity. A corresponding soundtrack further enhances the sensory experience.

With “Z Point”, Bulloch makes visible how we see images today and how digital media works. Every screen you know is made up of millions of such pixels. With the Pixel_Boxes, these smallest building blocks of our digital image worlds become three-dimensional objects in space. They show you that digital images – whether in the cinema or on your smartphone – ultimately consist of light and programmed signals.

In this work, the artist combines historical film material with modern lighting technology and lets you experience how much our perception has changed through digital media.

Text: Matthias Albrecht
Audio by: Matthias Albrecht
Recording, editing and technical realization: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digitale Museumspraxis Kunsthalle Bielefeld)

What can you see here? An artificial sunset?
You may have had exactly this impression when you entered the room. But if you look around carefully, you can find out how this effect is created:
The bright red semicircle of light is projected onto a mirror by a spotlight and a color filter. Below the mirror on the wall you will see a radiant arch. If you look in the mirror, the semicircle is complemented by its reflection on the opposite wall.

Depending on your position in the room, the image changes and the impression of color and form shifts. This is exactly what Olafur Eliasson is all about: be attentive to what light and reflection do to your perception. You are not just a viewer here – you are part of the artwork.

Eliasson says: “If you want to understand what atmosphere is and what constitutes it, you cannot separate this phenomenon from the question of perception.” His installations allow you to experience how reality is constantly changing through your senses and your movements in space.

Olafur Eliasson’s light-based works are in the tradition of the Light and Space movement. Since the 1960s, artists like him have used light not only as a means of illumination, but have turned it into an active material and a space for experience.

Text: Matthias Albrecht
Audio by: Nadine Kleinken
Recording, editing and technical realization: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digitale Museumspraxis Kunsthalle Bielefeld)

You see gold paper with white, embossed numbers that look like numbers on digital watches. Did you notice that 1 to 9 appear, but not the zero?

The work is called Life Face on Gold, and the title refers to a Buddhist concept: the “Face of Life” or “Life Face” – in other words, the face of life itself. What you see here is, so to speak, a picture of life. What might this mean?

The gold background is not new – it comes from the medieval art tradition. Right next door you can see an example from the Kunsthalle collection.

Jesus and the 12 apostles are depicted in two rows on a landscape-format wooden panel decorated with lots of gold. Jesus is at the top center, looking at us. All the others except for the one depicted below on the left are looking at their respective attributes, i.e., the objects by which they can be identified.
Italian masters, Christ and the 12 Apostles, photo: Kunsthalle Bielefeld

In works such as “Christ and the 12 Apostles” from the 12th century, gold was a metaphor for the sacred and eternity due to its light-like shine.

The artist Tatsuo Miyajima combines this classical Western tradition with Buddhist philosophy. The white numbers engraved in the gold represent life in all its change. They do not embody eternity, but impermanence – the central Buddhist concept. Each number is a moment, it is immediately replaced by the next one. The zero never comes, because in Buddhism it symbolizes emptiness, absence. For Miyajima, however, life is a cycle without standstill or end, a continuous becoming.

Miyajima summarizes his artistic approach in three principles: “Keep Changing, Connect with Everything, Continue Forever.” – Keep changing, connect with everything, never stop. The gold background is thus reinterpreted: Not as a symbol of eternal truth, but as a carrier of life in its constant transformation.

Tatsuo Miyajima’s artistic concept for reading

Text: Matthias Albrecht
Audio by: Matthias Albrecht
Recording, editing and technical realization: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digitale Museumspraxis Kunsthalle Bielefeld)

You are looking at a painting full of light and color – “Jeanne à l’ombreille, Cavalière”, painted in 1906 on the French Mediterranean coast. Henri Manguin’s wife Jeanne can be seen sitting under gnarled trees and catching the sun with her orange parasol. Notice how the warm yellowish light captures her left leg, while the rest of the figure is in cool shades of purple and blue. The parasol – painted in intense orange – itself becomes a source of light, the luminous point of the picture. And can you see the light blue sea in the background? Together, they create a scene imbued with southern warmth and vibrant colors.

Manguin was one of the Fauves, or “savages” in German. This was a revolutionary group of artists at the beginning of the 20th century. They wanted to express emotions with pure, bright colors and used light in new ways. Before the Fauves, 19th century Impressionism – such as Claude Monet’s – had attempted to reproduce the effect of natural light as faithfully as possible. Impressionists explored how colors change under different lighting conditions. It was different before that: artists in the Baroque period around 200 years earlier used light dramatically to create depth and grandeur. You can find examples of Monet and Baroque paintings here:

An expansive landscape in warm shades of green and brown shows a small scene of the Good Samaritan helping an injured traveler in the foreground on the right. To the left are gnarled trees, fields and hills, with dramatic cloud formations in the sky in the background.
Rembrandt van Rijn, Landscape with the Good Samaritan, 1638, Public Domain

 

Painting by Claude Monet, 1872. View of the port of Le Havre at sunrise. An orange slice of sun is reflected on the misty, blue-grey water. Ships and harbor facilities dissolve in the morning mist, three small boats in the foreground.
Claude Monet, Impression, soleil levant. (Impression, rising sun), 1872. Public Domain

With Manguin and the Fauves, light is liberated: it is not simply a means of making objects visible. It doesn’t have to document, it doesn’t have to dominate. Instead, light becomes an immediate force of expression – the pure joy of light, the emotional perception of the moment. As with the artists in the “Alles Licht” exhibition, light is not only understood as brightness, but as an artistic medium in its own right. It creates atmosphere and changes how we perceive the world. Here, at Manguin, you can already feel it: the artist is not sharing an image with you, but a sensation – the experience of light itself.

Text: Matthias Albrecht
Audio by: Matthias Albrecht
Recording, editing and technical realization: Matthias Albrecht, Nadine Kleinken (Digitale Museumspraxis Kunsthalle Bielefeld)

Soundwalk

Zu sechs Beiträgen begleiteten die Besuchenden atmosphärische Sounds statt Sprache. This was communicated in the exhibition as follows:
Start a post in front of the corresponding artwork and let your perception go on a journey.

This audio was created by Nabila Jesch.
She used the artificial intelligence Udio. The final prompt is:

Create a 2-minute immersive, minimalist soundscape for a museum entrance hall with Angela Bulloch’s Night Sky LED artworks. Use subtle space sounds, gentle electronic pulses, and light sci-fi references (like Star Wars or 2001: A Space Odyssey) to evoke the wonder of constellations and the intersection of light, technology, and the cosmos. No vocals. Include soundeffects corresponding to space, chimes, stars and spaceships. Induce a change of perspectice at some point by inducing a shift of tones. The audio should focus on the space ambient, combined with several chimes and stars. Create a cinematic space ambient. Add many chimes according to a sky full of stars. Many chimes throughout the whole track.

This audio was created by Nabila Jesch.
The artificial intelligence Udio was used and the result was edited manually.
The finally used Prompt is:

Start with filling, lower tunes and slowly add light, sparkly noises like electronic pulses and high pitched sounds. Contrast low, dense tunes with light, high pitches glitches or short chimes. Fast and powerful.
Immersive, ambient soundscape for a museum exhibition about light, inspired by Mary Corse’s shimmering, reflective black and white paintings. Esspecially Mary Corse´s Black Glitter Painting, charakterized by a seemingly black canvas, but filled with sparkly glass elemens, which reflect light. Use subtle, sparkling textures and deep, resonant tones to evoke the interplay of light, space, and perception. The track should involve high pitched glitches.

This Audio was created by Nadine Kleinken
She used the artificial intelligence Udio. The final prompt is:

Create a instrumental soundscape inspired by Robert Irwin’s South South West. Use soft, warm, and transparent ambient textures with subtle movement and slow evolving layers. Blend diffuse and clear tones like overlapping light. Add gentle echoes, reverbs, and filtered resonance to evoke reflection and space. Include sparse bright accents for red and white light, glass-like and airy sounds. Calm, immersive, atmospheric, non-rhythmic.
Udio Settings
Instrumental: Yes
Length: 1:37
Avoid Genres: pop, rock, hip-hop, EDM, cinematic trailer, Heavy metal, rap,
Prompt Strength: 65%
Lyric Strength 0%
Clarity: 15%
Seed: -1

This audio was created by Matthias Albrecht
She used the artificial intelligence Udio. The final prompt is:

Prompt:
Erstelle einen **2-minütigen experimentellen Ambient-Soundscape** basierend auf Nancy Holts Kunstwerk *Dual Locators* (1972): 1. **Beginne mit fokussiertem, reinem Ton** (0:00–0:25) – als würde man durch ein präzises Instrument schauen 2. **Öffne dich zu einem lichthellen Motiv** (0:25–0:50) – ethereal, fast schwebend 3. **Wechsle die Perspektive** (0:50–1:15) – harmonisch völlig verschoben, ein neues Element, kontrastierend 4. **Echo und Reflexion** (1:15–1:45) – beide Perspektiven vermischen sich, Delays, als würde ein Spiegel reflektieren 5. **Synthese und Auflösung** (1:45–2:00) – Konvergenz oder Auflösung in Raum, offen endend **Tonalität:** Minimalistisch, rein, keine Narrativ – nur Wahrnehmung **Instrumente:** Synthetische Pads, Sinustöne, optional Glocken oder gefilterte Feldaufnahmen **Effekte:** Filterung, Reverb, Delays – subtil, nicht überwältigend **Länge:** Genau 2:00 Minuten **Mood:** Kontemplativ, erkundend, leicht, inspirierend – für Teenager bis Erwachsene

This audio was created by Nabila Jesch.
She used the artificial intelligence MusicGPT. The final prompt is:

Hör dir V1 von Crimson Horizon auf diesem Profil an. Erstelle mir das gleiche Audio, nur in einer längeren Version, etwa 2 Minuten lang. Ohne Lyrics. Behalte dabei den Prompt im Kopf, er lautet: Hör dir die beiden Audios Celestial Ember auf diesem Profil an, die du gerade generiert hast. Mach diese ein bisschen musikalischer, behalte aber den Prompt im Hinterkopf, mittels welchem du die beiden Audios generiert hast. behalte die dystopische Stimmung bei! Hier nochmal der Prompt: Deine Aufgabe ist es, ein Soundscape zu folgendem Scenario zu erstellen:
Du bist ein*e Besucher*in der Kunsthalle Bielefeld und besuchst die aktuelle Ausstellung zum Thema Licht und Lichtinstallationen. Du hast schon eine Stunde in der Ausstellung verbracht und bist nun im zweiten Obergeschoss, der letzten Etage deines Rundgangs angelangt. Als letztes hast du das Kunstwerk Z-Point von Angela Bulloch gesehen, woran dir vor allem die Farbigkeit und das Wechseln der Farben gefallen hat. Du hast ein bisschen Ahnung von Kunst, bist aber eher in die Kunsthalle gegangen, um dir an deinem freien Tag was Schönes anzuschauen. Auf die Ausstellung bist du über Sozial Media aufmerksam geworden, als du dir das neue House-Set deines besten Freundes angehört hast.
Du gelangst nun in einen Raum, welcher nur von einem einzigen, zeitgenössischen Kunstwerk bespielt wird, welches in seiner Wirkung jedoch den gesamten Raum einnimmt. Auf den ersten Blick ist nur zu sehen, wie der Raum von einem orange-rötlichen Licht eingedeckt wird. Zu sehen ist beim Betreten des Raums ein Halbkreis aus Licht an der Wand. Er erinnert an eine untergehende Sonne, allerdings nicht auf eine bedrohliche Art und Weise, sondern in einer Art und Weise, die an einen warmen Tag in der Wüste erinnert. Womöglich denkt man auch an einen Planeten oder beispielsweise das Poster der Dune-Filme von Denis Villeneuve. Du betrittst den Raum und wirst von diesem warmen Licht umgeben. Beim Umschauen fällt ein mit einem roten Farbfilter bestückter Scheinwerfer ins Auge. Betrachtest Du die Technik genauer, siehst du, dass dieser die Wand gegenüber vom großen roten Halbkreis bestrahlt. Auch hier ist ein Halbkreis zu sehen, allerdings anders herum und viel kleiner. Ebenfalls an der Wand hängt ein kleiner Spiegel, mittels dessen die andere Hälfte des Lichts reflektiert und eben an die gegenüberliegende Wand projiziert wird. Es handelt sich um Olafur Eliassons Werk Red Window Semicircle. Ein Motiv von Olafur Eliasson innerhalb seiner Arbeiten ist es, natürliche Phänomene wie Licht, Farbe und Bewegungen nachzuahmen und so Grenzen zwischen natürlicher und künstlicher Umgebung zu hinterfragen und aufzubrechen. Er beschäftigt sich mit der Schnittstelle zwischen Mensch und Technologie und hat dabei immer nachhaltige Ressourcen im Hinterkopf, ebenso wie die Natur eine große Rolle für Eliasson spielt. Mit dem Wissen schaust du dich in Ruhe im Raum um. Dir gefällt was du siehst, du erfährst den Raum als beruhigend, trotz des intensiv roten Lichts. Er gibt dir das Gefühl von Wärme.
Erstelle nun einen Soundscape, angepasst auf jenen Besucher und das Gefühl, was er beim Betrachten des Raumes bekommt. Man soll als Besucher*in der Ausstellung die Möglichkeit haben, beim Anhören jenes Soundscapes beim Betrachten jenes Raumes eine immersive Erfahrung des Kunstwerks vermittelt zu bekommen. Das Soundscape sollte etwa so lang sein, wie man sich den Raum anschaut – ich nehme an, etwa 1,5 bis 2 Minuten lang. Ohne Text.
Um den Gedankengang des Künstlers nicht zu übergehen, hier ein Zitat von Olafur Eliasson: „One of the great challenges today is that we often feel untouched by the problems of others and by global issues like climate change, even when we could easily do something to help. We do not feel strongly enough that we are part of a global community, part of a larger we. Giving people access to data most often leaves them feeling overwhelmed and disconnected, not empowered and poised for action. This is where art can make a difference. Art does not show people what to do, yet engaging with good work of art can connect you to your senses, body, and mind. It can make the world felt. And this feeling may spur thinking, engagement, and even action.”

This Audio was created by Nadine Kleinken
She used the artificial intelligence Udio. The final prompt is:

Erzeuge ein Soundscape, das die Atmosphäre des Kunstwerks „Intense Light Digit“ von Tatsuo Miyajima widerspiegelt. Das Soundscape soll eine klare, einer Uhr ähnelnde, rhythmische Struktur besitzen, die das aufsteigende Zählen von eins bis neun in wiederkehrenden Zyklen nachvollzieht. Circa alle 33 Sekunden folgt ein kurzer Moment mit gedämpften, schwebenden Geräuschen, um darzustellen, wie das grelle Licht kurz vor den Augen nachhallt, wenn für die Null symbolisch das Licht ganz ausgeht. Verwende moderne, elektronisch-digitale Klänge, die zwischen hellen, klaren Sounds und dunklen, minimalistisch-atmosphärischen Texturen wechseln. Die Klänge sollen den Zuhörer konfrontieren, ohne Unbehagen zu verursachen. Die Klangkomposition soll immersiv sein, mit räumlichen Effekten wie Hall und Echo, um den Eindruck eines dunklen Raums mit intensivem, blendendem Licht zu erzeugen. Innerhalb eines Zyklus von 1 bis 9 sollten leichte Veränderungen im Klang stattfinden, um die veränderte Lichtintensität bei jeder Zahl wiederzugeben. Vermeide dabei aber melodischen Aufbau und bewahre eine eher ruhige Gesamtatmosphäre. Das Soundscape soll emotional den Kreislauf von Leben und Tod vermitteln, nachdenklich und spannend sein, dabei aber zugänglich und ansprechend für ein Publikum von Jugendlichen bis zu älteren Erwachsenen. Kein Gesang oder Text.
Einstellungen für Udio:
Instrumental: Ja
– Länge: 2:10 Legacy
– Zu vermeidende Genres: Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, Country, Classik, pop, rock, hip-hop, EDM, cinematic trailer
– Prompt Strength: 60%
– Lyric Strength: 0%
– Clarity: 70%
– Seed: -1

Gallerie

On a white wall, many vertically mounted fluorescent tubes are placed close together. Colours range from white to yellow and blue to grey and black. In front of them is the blurred silhouette of a person.
Installation view "All Light. Light and Space Yesterday and Today". Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Video projection on the wall: A yellow-gold theatre auditorium with a view of the stage from the upper rows of seats. In front of the camera is a person aged around 15, presumably female, with brown skin, brown eyes and brown hair. She is wearing a dark blue hoodie with yellow print.
All Light. Light and Space yesterday and today. Installation view. Photo Philipp Ottendörfer
A blue-violet sphere measuring approximately 1.50 metres, composed of triangles. Illuminated from within, creating many light reflections on the wall behind it. Next to the sphere is a young woman with long blonde hair. She is looking at the sphere.
Installation view "All Light. Light and Space Yesterday and Today". Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
On a white box approximately 3 metres high built in front of a wall, a milky-white glowing object in a narrow rectangular shape, standing upright on the surface.
Installation view "All Light. Light and Space Yesterday and Today". Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Next to a yellow glowing sphere mounted on a wall stands a young woman with blonde hair and black clothing. She looks at the sphere.
Installation view "All Light. Light and Space Yesterday and Today". Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
A 7-segment digital display under the ceiling in the art gallery. The number 2 is illuminated.
All Light. Light and Space yesterday and today. Installation view. Photo Philipp Ottendörfer
In one corner of the Kunsthalle, a circular spot of light on the wall. In front of it, a slender object made of a long and a short metal tube, welded at an angle, like a telescope.
All Light. Light and Space yesterday and today. Installation view. Photo Philipp Ottendörfer
In a room lit by red-orange light, a spotlight projects a circle of light onto a wall with a mirror. The lower half of the circle is visible on the wall, while the other half is reflected by the mirror onto the opposite wall. In the room is a person with long hair and dark clothing.
Installation view "All Light. Light and Space Yesterday and Today". Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
On the long and short walls of a room in the Kunsthalle, five colourful plastic objects protrude slightly into the space. They are reminiscent of giant sweets.
All Light. Light and Space yesterday and today. Installation view. Photo Philipp Ottendörfer
On a white wall, a semi-transparent disc-shaped object with a narrow horizontal transparent surface. On the wall, a play of light and shadow, including that of two people standing in front of the object, one on the left with long blonde hair, one on the right with short dark hair.
Installation view "All Light. Light and Space Yesterday and Today". Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
View from one room of the art gallery to another. At the front left on the wall is a small square picture with a circular shape, brownish in colour. At the back right on the wall in the other room is a wall-filling object made up of numerous vertical and parallel fluorescent tubes in many colours, reminiscent of a barcode.
All Light. Light and Space yesterday and today. Installation view. Photo Philipp Ottendörfer
In front of a wall of purple to blue glowing squares standing freely in the room, the blurred silhouette of a person.
Installation view "All Light. Light and Space Yesterday and Today". Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
A blue-violet sphere measuring approximately 1.50 metres, suspended freely in the room and composed of triangles. Illuminated from within, it creates numerous light reflections on the walls and ceiling.
All Light. Light and Space yesterday and today. Installation view. Photo Philipp Ottendörfer
On the right-hand wall, fluorescent tubes are mounted upright, close together, reminiscent of a barcode. On the left-hand wall is a glowing white object reminiscent of a flower. Two people are in the room.
All Light. Light and Space yesterday and today. Installation view. Photo Philipp Ottendörfer
View into two rooms of the art gallery. In the foreground on the right, three square paintings on a gold background hang on the wall; to the left, a view into a dark room with an almost floor-to-ceiling wall of luminous square elements.
All Light. Light and Space yesterday and today. Installation view. Photo Philipp Ottendörfer