by Kelly Presutti | 21 December 2010 | Uncategorized
Today I stumbled upon a publication by the “Lighting Research Center” – an organization I was utterly unaware of. Part of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, their mission is “to advance the effective use of lighting and thereby to create a positive legacy for society and the environment.” This type of research is obviously of importance to museums trying to effectively show off the artworks in their collections. But I was more interested in their discussion of light and human perception, the explanation of how our eyes acclimate to differently lit environments, and the scientific account of the ways lighting affects our disposition (see especially how exposure to blue light can lead to increased alertness at night). Having just seen the Suprasensorial exhibition at MOCA, I couldn’t help but think of Carlos Cruz-Diez’ 1965 Cromosaturación, an installation that plays on those very concepts. At the opening, visitors were fascinated by the shifts in vision they experienced as they passed from a green-lit room, to a red one, to a blue, and then back through again. Putting my experience of Diez’ work together with the Lighting Research Center book gave me an entirely new understanding – and prompted me to think again about serendipity in academic research.
Serendipity plays an acknowledged role in science (LSD, the color mauve, krazy glue, and plastic wrap are just a few of its products), and sociologists are beginning to examine its part in humanities scholarship. The library at the Warburg Institute is one example of an institution designed to take serendipity into account. There are other libraries, however, where scholars are seated according to discipline, region, and time period, limiting the possibility for surprise findings. How has serendipity affected your scholarship? Are there ways to integrate it into the research process?
And, in another bit of lighting-related news, the European Commission recently classified installations by Dan Flavin and Bill Viola as not-art, meaning they’ll be subjected to 20% VAT (rather than the 5% VAT for “artworks”); see also Jeremy’s post below. The organization argues it is the lighting “effects” rather than the “fixtures” that constitute art…