Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen
England/Germany
Twilight
"Twilight is a modern mimesis, of the city, of electricity. It fills the force field of a room with a public act of play" (Patrick Lynch, SexyMachinery, issue 04, 2001).
When approaching the installation you encounter a soft grid of small green lights floating in space. In front of the grid, a child's paper windmill catches your attention. A blow on the windmill, and the grid swells into a field of light, waxing, waning, receding and rolling over itself - accompanied by its unique rhythmic breathing. The installation consists of a suspended wire structure under tension. 256 LEDs, or light emitting diodes, are clipped to the structure, diffused by simple waxed paper drinking cups. The lights fade up and down in fluid movement depending upon the speed of the propella in front of the screen.
Twilight is at the same time urban and intimate, corresponding to the expectations of the electrified square as well as to the seduction of the twinkling sky. The immediacy of a breath, the blow on the windmill, is interpreted and translated into a formal, yet sensual gesture, in the form of a public display.
In their work, Evans & Hansen explore the notions of "tangible interfaces" and "augmented space"; environments in which physical objects become means of communication. As in the earlier installation Pli-Replis-Deplis, (2000) the artists aim is to establish a physical space of action and collaboration that generates qualitative changes of a subtle and poetic kind.
www.hehe.org