DOMESTIC LIGHT is a multi-year sensor and performance project led by video and media artist Ian Winters that explores the nature of the light home and domesticity worldwide. At the core of DOMESTIC LIGHT is a new network of multi-spectral color sensors hosted in domestic window sills in each time zone around the world to document the literal color of “home” over the 2023-2024 solar year.
Learn about hosting a sensor here
The question yields a complex array of answers: the particular blue of winter Bay Area sky after a rain, the yellow of one’s inherited incandescent lamp, the slate-grey of afternoon rain. Part violet, part teal, part blue, part red, part yellow – none are readily reduced to the Red, Green and Blue of computer screens and print.
Using that global network of multi-chromatic light sensors, Domestic Light creates a real time light and color portrait of our earth from the perspective of home, as well as a sonic portrait of home created by collaborator, composer Pamela Z from monthly sound fragments shared by each site. Sited in domestic window sills in each of the Earth’s time zones in both northern and southern hemispheres for a solar year Domestic Light takes root in an understanding of home and the post COVID public sphere, the urgent need to build community to community networks and the role of artists in cultivating observation of one’s own environmental transformations.
At the heart of the project are the hosts of the light sensors. We will be seeking hosts from each time zone on earth – north and south to receive a multi-spectral light sensor and host it from Summer 2023 to Summer 2024 by placing it in a domestic windowsill. The sensors will upload the color of light in real time to create a global data time-lapse of the color of home. If you are interested – please fill out inquiry form and we will be in touch with more detailed information about what is needed.
In addition to an online portal launching in Summer 2023 the project will premiere a live performance installation featuring Z and Winters in summer-fall 2024, and events organized by our Creative Work Fund commissioning partner Leonardo.
Key collaborators include Weidong Yang (sensor and data programming), Pamela Z (composer), Leonardo / ISAST, by residencies at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program and the Sussex Humanities Lab along with the support of the Creative Work Fund.
More details coming in spring 2023.
Would you like to host a sensor?