I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting - follow up & pictures

By fabric | ch

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One month and a half ago, we were presenting a new work during the 2010 01SJ Biennial in South Hall, San Jose -- an amazingly big air conditioned (and sort of inflated) hall in the downtown area -- (in San Jose, San Francisco Bay Area, CA), under the exhibition main title "Build Your Own World".

This artificial interior landscape cut from natural light was the ideal place to set up I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting, a new work from fabric | ch that uses I-Weather, the open source artificial climate based on human metabolism, circadian rythms and on medical knowledge about light therapy and chronotherapy.

The main purpose of the installation, as mentioned earlier on this blog, was to "propose a critical use of I-Weather as a model for a metabolic public lighting source, distributed and synchronized through an imaginary Deep Space Internet into the confined and conditioned environments of space exploration vehicles or into speculative public spaces of “distant colonies”". 

What could a public space offer in 2010? How could public lighting --an old technology... that still defines most part of the public space at night-- evolve? What is the nature of space in Outer Space, is it public, private? If it is a public space -- by now, space exploration has been mostly supported by public fundings... --, could we light it up with a public and open source artificial climate, distributed through a new type of Internet? These were some of the ideas we tried to adress through this piece.

And here are (finally!) some follow-up pictures of the installation.

Yellow-Orange time ("night"): 

According to the lighting and color rules of I-Weather, yellow-orange light (above) doesn't affect your body clock, it is therefore similar to a night situation, but where you can still undertake calm activities. At some periods (just below), I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting presented the full color spectrum of I-Weather, a gradient that vary from blue to orange (day to night) and that could also therefore be read as a "time rainbow". Below, in blue, is the day time (blue light blocks the secretion of melatonin into the body).

Gradient time ("time rainbow", all times at the same time):

 Blue time (day):

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I-Weather has been produced with the support of Swissnex San Francisco and Pro Helvetia.

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