S k y l i g h t
Pascale Bardos, Skylight, 2018, digital moving image projection, 25:00
A poetic image is a construct formed from the echoes of memories that act to cultivate new realisations. My intention is to create work that poetically encompasses my research and harnesses the capacity to share this information through a sensorial embodiment of space, stimulating both inner and outer perceptions that heighten experiences of phenomena.
‘Skylight’ endeavors to explore figurative movements between expansive and retractive states, through the perceivable shifts of day transitioning into night. Pointing a camera above the horizon line of the ocean, the frame only capturing the sky, I video documented twilight. I filmed the atmosphere for an hour as light blue tones drifted into navy blacks. I doubled the speed of the film so when projected, a heightened sensation of transition was palpable within the experiential environment. I produced two videos, one portraying time moving in a forward motion, showing the day to night transition while the other in reverse, mirroring the change from dark to light emulating the night to day transition of dawn. The videos were then played forward and in reverse, creating a continuously looping cycle.
The two videos are projected vertically, side by side in the corner of a room, the light spanning from the floor to the ceiling of the gallery space. Meeting in the corner, the projections kiss one another along their horizon line. At one point in the cycle of the loop the two videos portray the same colour, becoming one unified projection and then transition apart. The flux of colour and light with these fleeting moments of union, speaks to how within the motion of expansion and retraction, times of synchronisation can occur.
The shifting blue hues slowly transition and are only apparent when time is spent within the space. Being absorbed by the colour, a cognitive mirroring orientates the viewer with the light projections. The work intends to provide a platform for individual experience through new perceptual encounters. The encounter in the space repositions the audience’s collective experience of the perception of our atmosphere and the phenomena of Earth’s heliocentric cycle. The corner becomes a portal, offering an opportunity to enter and be submerged in the transitional space, providing conditions that foster reflection and contemplation. The ambience of light evokes a sense of being that fuses collective logic and individual perception into a singular encounter.