2012
Interactive installation
Projector, organza curtains, fan, Kinect sensor, computer, speaker, haze machine
Dimensions variable
distant light – interactive begins with a question I keep asking myself: why are we drawn toward what lies beyond us? Living in a world designed by people, I often find myself longing for natural space from within artificial surroundings. What moves us across physical and psychological distance, toward someone or something else?
Light is the medium of this question. Although it makes everything visible, light itself is rarely noticed, because we see things only by what it reflects. When I look toward the sun, everything in my vision turns visible and invisible at once. The threshold of perception lies between light and shadow.
In the installation, curtain walls of organza fill a darkened room. A fan and a haze machine recreate wind and atmosphere. A Kinect sensor reads the movement and curvature of the curtains as they swing, and from this data the computer generates a spectrum of natural hues in real time, projected back through the fabric and the haze. The light source stays hidden behind the moving layers, drawing visitors forward while the sheets they must pass through keep hiding it.
Press:
Watch: A Recreation Of The Soothing Magic Of Sunlight (FastCo. 06-18-12)
Yoo’s latest installation, Distant Light, explores the paramount role of light in experiencing reality. A room is transformed with curtain walls and Yoo has recreated the effects of haze and wind that makes the unpalpable sheets move. A source of light is hidden behind the moving transparent layers. The artificial re-creation of natural elements such as light and wind highlights and amplifies the dependency of human perception on them. Once immersed in the space, the viewer is driven to walk toward the light source and to experience the obstacles that hide it. In a shifting play with visible and invisible forces, the work invites for curiosity and the process of discovering the surrounding through direct perceptual experience. (Frame Magazine)
distant light 