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Light         Space          Time

When I explore the relationship between weather and emotion, I find that related artists' works are related to light, time and space. Light is used as a material in both natural and artificial lighting. The works of James Turrell, Doug Wheeler, and Olafur Eliasson have created an interactive atmosphere, a space created by light, to stimulate the audience's feelings. In addition to the dimension of space, James Turrell adds a dimension of time to his work.finishing the work according to the time of sunrise and sunset. Time, the time of sunlight, is related to sunrise and sunset. Space ,which spaces created by stimulating the human brain with light.

Artist Olafur Eliasson 

THE WEATHER PROJECT

The work of Olafur Eliasson expresses the relationship between human emotion and the weather. His work not only shows the result of what he found, but he also creates an interactive atmosphere that audiences can experience the influence of weather directly. To sum up, audiences can see themselves sensing. In his work ‘The Weather Project’, he used lights to let audiences feel the power of sunlight. However, everyone’s feeling is different. It depends on the audiences' own experience. Sunlight or water stays in people’s ordinary life; it is about personal memories. His work is like the mirror, and people can get through it to increase self-reflection. That is, his works combine Anna Wirz-Justice's theory of chronobiology, which is about the influence of time and seasons on people's moods. In Anna Wirz-Justice's interview, she mentioned that ‘…everyone should go outside to get enough light to improve their mood in the morning and just to connect with the universe.’ People can find the philosophy of the universe by light; the work of Eliasson also explores the universe. People can feel a universal language of colour in his work. Because I concern about how emotions respond to weather, his work represents a way to create a feeling and how to reach emotional resonance. And the weather is not just a natural phenomenon; it's also a way for the human to relate themselves to the universe. Sunlight is an invisible object; Eliasson uses lots of different materials to express it; his work manifests a process of transforming abstraction into the concrete.

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Olafur Eliasson, The Weather Project, Tate Modern

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Olafur Eliasson, Room for One Colour, National Gallery, 2017; Tate Modern 2019

Film Blade Runner 2049

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Blade Runner 2049 (2017) Phone Wallpaper | Moviemania

Olafur Eliasson installation 'Room for One Colour'  invited audiences entre an interactive space. Audiences are immersed in a narrow wavelength of light had the effect of limiting one's spectral range and when looking around at others in the space is as though their perceptual apparatus was being re-calibrated and they were only capable of seeing shades of yellow, black, white and grey. His artworks are always saturated in a monochrome colour -- sodium yellowish hue. This kind of colour is easy to cause some warm feeling and relate to sunlight. However, Film Blade Runner 2049 also used predominantly yellow palette, people will have a strong feeling about sun. How to make an artificial environment connect to the sun and simulate perceptual apparatus? When I find the relationship between Blade Runner 2049 and Olafur Eliasson, I realized the main material in my art practice. Light Artists like choosing a strong colour or contrast colour to simulate spectators. Olafur's work, we can find some change of light, from brightness to darkness. This kind of transformation include philosopher of the time, people can experience the sunlight of the whole day.Light is expressed from two dimensions: time and space.

weather project
room and film
24h

Artwork of capture 24 - hour daylight 

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London Fieldworks, Polaria Installation, Wapping Project, London, 2020, composite.

Photo: Courtesy London Fieldworks.

Polaria

London Fieldworks

How can light affect humans? Most artists choose a visualized way to create their artworks; they set up an atmosphere to let audiences feeling themselves sensing. But in the work of London Fieldworks, which named Polaria, they record the aggregate data on how light influences the human body. They used a spectroradiometer to periodically measure and record light, and using a range of biomonitors, the body’s physiological responses. Then they create a space of light. This work is a real report, and it displays a result for the audience. So I should consider one of these two ways to express my conception. Showing my answer in my practice or mentioning a question let audiences to understand by themselves. Because of the particular location of London, people cannot enjoy the light in Winter, which improves the quantity of suffering the seasonal affective disorder. Emotion is not only a psychic reaction, but the essence of it is also a physiological response. When I consider how to express the relationship between weather and emotion, I may also start from the physical instinct to explore.

Artists of 'Light and space'

Doug Wheeler

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Doug Wheeler

DW 68 VEN MCASD 11, 1968/2011

White UV neon light

18 x 34 x 33 feet (548.6 x 1036.3 x 1005.8 cm)

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Doug Wheeler

Untitled, 1969

Vacuum-formed acrylic, sprayed lacquer on acrylic, magnetic transformer, and argon neon

91 1/2 x 91 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches (232.4 x 232.4 x 19.1 cm)

When we look back James Turrell, Doug Wheeler and Olafur Eliasson...it is easy to find that they all choose light as a kind of materials to make the perception’s experience of light. The biggest problem for my art practice is how to make work resonate the viewers. So I research some artists of light to rich my aesthetic experience. They were all exploring the relationship between space and light, You can think of them as a whole movement, but each one is so different individually. Turrell’s works combine the light of nature with artistic light, audiences can appreciate the contrastive light at the same time. Wheeler’s works are more intensive the experience of perception. Eliasson’s works immerse monochrome colour. And I deeply explore the artists of light and space.‘light and space’movement is a label which was concerned with how geometric shapes and use of light could affect the environment and perception of the viewer. They all created a sensory light environment using artificial and natural light. And Turrell’s work is about revealing what is there, prompting us to remember that light is no just about brightness or illumination, it relates to our very existence and encourages comprehension. In combination with my research question, I should use artificial or natural light to make the audience experience emotional fluctuations.

James Turrell

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James Turrell,THE INNER WAY, 1999

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Jame Turrell,SKYSPACE,2013

The basics of emotion 

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The surrounding environment easily influences me, so I try to find the reason why some of us always affect it. In the book, it is clear that emotion bases on personal experience. People understand the feeling of emotion, just because people experience it every day. When someone mentions a kind of emotion, the others will feel the same sense of it directly, like upset, depress, happiness. However, why people will produce emotion? Which kind of condition will affect emotion? Emotions involve some perceptual experience –they are responses to what we see and hear, smell, and touch; they include some evaluation or appraisal. That is why most artists can create a successful atmosphere to invite audiences to interact. It gives me some ideas to consider the emotional engagement of audiences. All of us experience weather, we know the sense of weather, but we cannot describe it clearly, it is an abstraction. I think if I give a feeling of weather, it will be better than providing an object of describing the weather. And this book also mentions that emotion will affect two opposites. For example, if someone feels strong cold sensing in winter when spring coming, he will feel warm. It seems like people go through some contrastive things that will easy to produce sense. The emotion is a kind of body reflection. How to connect the body of a human to my art practice? What type of atmosphere will improve emotional engagement? How to relate weather to emotion? I find two crucial ways. Firstly, I need to combine some experiences of the ordinary with practice; the other one is that I need to express two opposites to improve the sensing of the audience.

james and doug
emotion
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