Saulius and I are relatively happy with the work – though it’s a hard thing to document – the light is very fine.It looked absolutely beautiful at times; each time the light reflected off a mirror, it refracted very slightly so that by the fourth angle, it was very soft – and had divided itself into threads of light within the one main beam. Lovely.
Maybe we should have had a smoke machine there. I had wondered about it, but it seemed to me that that could, if we weren’t careful, be a bit showy and begin to detract from the very simple thing that we were trying to do – that is, to draw a line, using laser light technology, through two opposing buildings, connecting them using the line but driving the line through from one end of the location to the other.
What was really excellent about this project was that a good few people turned up to see what we did and they really interacted with the line. It was good to see the line build as we placed the mirrors, and to discover how the line worked and changed in response.
We didn’t get to take the line up to the sky which we’d wanted to do, but we’d always been clear that it was an experimental piece of work for us with no dress rehearsal.
Eero began to make a fire to generate some smoke – just as my lasers gave up (and now no longer function). We’d decided to rely on batteries and while the 9V ones we’d used over the weekend had been fine – Sony ones – the batteries which the crew brought for us gave up almost immediately and the lasers started to play up – I’d hardly used before I came here but they’d been as good as gold all weekend.
We all know that brand matters with batteries. But remember – it really DOES matter.
What’s interesting about this for me is that while, because we didn’t complete the work and get superb documentation, the TV show will see it as a failure. I don’t and neither does Saulius. We did most of what we wanted to do, people got involved and engaged with the work, we watched the line change and we changed the space – as a bonus, the people in the TV crew had never seen this small but atmospheric part of the city before.
I thought this morning of Catherine Yass’ High Wire project – her tight-rope walker only began to walk out – he never completed it as intended because it was too windy on the day.
But the work still stands proud.
