Peter Rose

Studies in Transfalumination: the first experiments.



 Is it possible to think of a beam of light not as something that departs, is reflected, and returns, all of which posits Time, but from the point of viewpoint of the photon, for which time stops, so that the simultaneity of departures and arrivals mimics touch.  Can seeing be a form of touching.  And might the specificity of this touch, as opposed to the totalizing perspective of vision, reveal new structural aspects of the physical world?

    I have figured out, at last, how to throw a sheet of light out into space and how to move with it so as to sustain an odd kind of animated interaction with trees bridges, tufts of grass, and other odd structures.  I have been experimenting with a tactic I call "transfalumination."  I venture at night into the marginal geographies of the city and perform peculiar ceremonies with light, hoping to bring back images that appeal to some deep sense of the mysterious and that illustrate the proposition that seeing can be a form of touch.  Shot using a home-made contraption that turns a ray of light into a plane of illumination which was then set loose upon the nocturne.


 

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