The Light Art Performance Photography (LAPP) or commonly called LightPainting. Close relationships between light, movement and photography.

Recently, and due to the importance of technological advances in light emitters, we see an old photographic technique that progressively has been transforming few years ago a new trend into a new way for amateurs to play and experiment with it. I'm talking about the commonly known and bad defined "Light Graffiiti" or "Light Painting". First of all, we have to consider some standard definitions I've found in the cloud sources.

Photography: Modern word derived from the Greek photos- for “light and –grafos for “drawing”.

Light Painting: is a photographic technique in which exposures are made by moving a hand-held light source or by moving the camera.

According to this definition, the unique elements that converts “Light Painting” as a unique technique in photography is first of all the fact of movement, but second , and more specifically, the use of a light source as a differentiating element.

One of its features is surprisely that it’s really opposite to the fact that photography is static by definition. It captures actions in specific moments and represents them in a static support. The the main key features are the capability to capture an infinite set of different movements, parameters and actions of a light source (natural or artificial one) that takes place in front of the camera lens, and modifying the shutter speed parameter to low we can get a representation of tall these actions gathered in the same “couché” support or digital image. Briefly , this technique requires always movement and captures exactly the transport of photons along the light movement sequence that we have previously planned. What is really important here is the path photons left in the context or scene we had previously prepared. Experimentation changing the parameters is frequently required to have the expected results.


Light Painting Photography can be traced back to the year 1914 when Frank Gilbreth, along with his wife Lillian Moller Gilbreth, used small lights and the open shutter of a camera to track the motion of manufacturing and clerical workers. Measuring work  movements to improve productivity was one of the starting points for this kind of art photography. Below, some images representing the worker's movements. 

Frank Gilbreth - Workers Movements Analyse

Frank Gilbreth - Workers Movements Analyse

Frank Gilbreth - Workers Movements Analyse

Man Ray, in his 1935 series "Space Writing," was the first known art photographer to use the technique and Barbara Morgan began making light paintings in 1940.

Space writing by Light Painter - Man Ray

Barbara Morgan, 1940 - "Pure Energy and Neurotic Man"

Gjon Milli (Albania 1904 – New York 1984), was really the precursor of this technique but used from an artistic point of view. This MIT engineer graduate, was one of the first in use the electronic flash and the stroboscopic instruments –normally used to analyze sequences of quick movements with flashlights- into the artistic photography. He started his works as a freelance photographer some years after he arrived to New York. In 1939 he started to work as a LIFE Magazine photographer, position he held until his death in 1984, publishing his works on the main covers. Over the years he travelled around the world to photograph celebrities, artists, sport events, concerts, sculptures, etc. 

Gjon Milli for LIFE Magazine

Gjon Milli for LIFE Magazine

One of the works that best defines the firsts “light Painting” photography as art was the tandem he created with Pablo Picasso. The LIFE Mag assignment was to photograph the artist in his Riviera studio. Gjon showed the artist some of his photographs of ice skaters with tiny lights affixed to their skates jumping in the dark–and Picasso’s mind began to race. The series of photographs–Picasso’s light drawings–were made with a small flashlight in a dark room; the images vanished almost as soon as they were created.

Gjon Milli for LIFE Magazine - Picasso in his Studio

Gjon Milli for LIFE Magazine - Picasso in his Studio

Gjon Milli for LIFE Magazine - Picasso in his Studio

Gjon Milli for LIFE Magazine - Picasso in his Studio

Leaving the origins, and exploring today's evolution in photography and light,  you'll certainly be amazed with the next "Light Painting" related story. What really made me scream and start this article was the fact of founding in one of this new funding web-based platform for different projects, one called PixelStick. Apparently this guys are looking for some money to develop his product. This is the product description seen in the funding webpage, and I quote:



“Pixelstick reads images created in Photoshop (or the image editor of your choice) and displays them one line at a time, creating endless possibilities for abstract and/or photorealistic art. Taking this one step further, Pixelstick can increment through a series of images over multiple exposures, opening up light painting to the world of timelapse, and allowing for animations the likes of which have never before seen. Pixelstick consists of 198 full color RGB LEDs inside lightweight aluminum housing. Pixelstick’s brain, a small mounted box, reads images from an SD card and displays them, one line at a time. Each LED corresponds to a single pixel in the image. The images themselves can be from 1 to 198 pixels tall and many thousands of pixels wide. The handle is perpendicular and has a secondary aluminum sleeve, allowing pixelstick to spin freely. Pixelstick uses 8 AA batteries. Throughout testing we’ve used Sanyo Eneloop and Amazon rechargeable to great success, never requiring more than one set for a long night’s shooting.”

You can see the video here.

If we are looking in this platform for a project related to the word “lighting”, we can get easily about 1400 different projects. This is one of 1400. Well, what really petrifies me is that the authors requested initially for the development and industrialization what I consider a tipical “gadget” 110.000 $. Well, the question is: Which has been the investor’s answer when still 20 days to go? The answer is that incredibily they have collected 478.941 $. 435 % more than they requested. Wow! Words speak for themselves. The formule isn't that obvious. The innovation recipe is that they created a product that follow the current context (photography democratization) , thet used the advantages of technological progress (affordable new light emitters -LED’s-) , the personalization (through combining different technologies in one) , and the aim of design an object  for fun / hobby (in our free time and specially at night). Bravo! Honestly, I should say that I never imagined that light had many fans, but certainly yes: 1.679 project investors. See here some pictures of what this dispositive is capable of:

Object system

Some captures playing with the gadget

Funny patterns we can do

We can place Graffiti wherever we want without legal issues

    

With some creativity we can create animated GIF's

Coming back to the main theme, and looking trough the possibilities of this art,  I think that “Light Painting” is a bad definition of what the technique offers, on the one hand because we are always forced to specify the photographic context to cause a misunderstanding. Otherwise we can confuse this technique with the action of paint with light as we saw in the past article "Light Vs Pigment"  when I mentioned James Turrell artworks. On the other hand because as I said before, the term Photography in itself takes already in consideration the words “light” and “drawing” as its own meaning like two different and necessary parameters to realize a photography. This will produce a redundant definition.



Some other people call it “Graffiti Light”, term which maybe could be representative by parameters like his characteristic speedy action, and the characteristic light strokes in some pictures, but LAPP (Light Art Performance Photography) is the word I would keep because it requires thinking in an action, a performance to develop in a determinate time and place. The authors say that the main difference from other photographic forms like “light painting” or “light writing” is the inclusion of the background in the photo and the importance it takes, but I think the meaning of LAPP is wider than including a background as a main feature. 

In March 2007, Jan Leonardo Wöllert developed and named the art. Six months later, in collaboration with Jörg Miedza, he founded the project LAPP-PRO.de that further developed the technique. In 2011, the pair separated. LAPP has grown internationally since its inception. 

I leave you wit some images of them until the next release. Enjoy them by separate in their respective websites or together.

Jan Leonardo Wöllert & Jörg Miedza

Jan Leonardo Wöllert & Jörg Miedza

P.D: Sorry for all artists that currently are working in this way for not include them in this short vision. Feel free to contact me for any comment or suggestion.

Artificial Light comes from Natural Light

Light has become one of the most interesting phenomena across the planet Earth history. The Sun, has been emitting radiation to the Earth since approx. 6.000.000.000 years, thanks to the combination of two components, helium and hydrogen, that we can find in his nucleus and his atmosphere. Each second, 654.600.000 tons of hydrogen fuses into 650.000.000 tons of helium in the external layer of the nucleus. The small quantity of energy of this fusion arriving to the Earth surface is enough to maintain the whole life in our planet. 

NASA Sun storm pictures

Due to the huge quantity of these two elements, we can say that this star has been emitting radiation only for a while. What will happen when these reserves will become exhausted? It is thought that when the hydrogen reserves will exhaust, the helium nucleus will grow and will start his fusion, converting the star in a red and giant entity emitting intense heat. This will cause the seas evaporation and consequently the end of life known up to now.  But no worries at all… still at least 8.000.000.000 millions of years to enter in this second phase. 

Nasa Sun storm pictures

Therefore, the Sun has become the catalyst element for life. Plants receive radiation from the sun and realize photosynthesis (Carbon Dioxide + Sun Radiation + H2O = O2 + sucrose), herbivores absorb a small quantity of this energy eating this plants, and carnivores absorb a smaller quantity eating herbivores.

Plant Cells

Equally, don’t forget that the great majority of human energy sources are based in the energy emitted by the sun. Fossil fuel preserve the energy captured millions of years ago, hydroelectric energy uses the potential energy of water through the hydrologic cycle that passes by the three physical matters (oceanic water evaporation, condensation, precipitation and run-off). Eolic energy is another way of radiation profiting;  winds are originated when the Sun heats with different intensity some Earth areas. Solar cells are of course, one of the best systems to transform solar radiation into electrical power using semiconductors that exhibit the photovoltaic effect; this refers to photons of light exciting electrons into higher state of energy, allowing them to act as charge carriers for an electric current. 

In this way, Photons, an elementary particle, the quantum of light and all other forms of electromagnetic radiation and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force, according to his energy or wavelength are capable of: photo-ionize the external layer of an atom, excite atom electrons to another upper layer, dissociate a molecule, vibrate molecules and rotate molecules. There are so many natural processes where light has an active paper.

Radiations are visible when are inscribed in wavelengths between approximately 380 mµ and 780 mµ. That means human eye is reactive to this set of wavelengths, but all values above 780 mµ is Infrared non-visible light  and all under 380 mµ is Ultraviolet and is also non-visible for the human eye.

Regarding the first article appeared in this blog “Light Vs Pigment”, and putting the question what was before for the first human eye (light colours or pigment colours?) it is now clear that colour pigments in object surfaces are possible because lighting existence. Our retina only is capable to see specific wavelengths in radiation, and one of the biggest features is colour. For the human eye, not only all the visible wavelengths generates the same sensitivity. This is why Matthew Luckiesh (1916). In his book “Light and shade and their applications”. (D. Van Nostrand Company), he started to define the “Spectral sensitivity curves of human cone cells". His study revealed that the most sensitivity radiation belongs to wavelengths close to 550 mµ, which corresponds to yellow and green colours. (see graphic below)

Despite its multiple accepted meanings the first definition of light in the Oxford dictionary is:

 “Noun 1 [mass noun] the natural agent that stimulates sight and makes things visible”

But another definition more in relationship with physics is when its referred to “visible light” as we can see in the CIE (1987). International Lighting Vocabulary. Number 17.4. CIE, 4th edition. ISBN 978-3-900734-07-7.By the International Lighting Vocabulary, the definition of light is: 

“Any radiation capable of causing a visual sensation directly.”

I will highlight the fact that light is considerated from a human point of view, because all definitions are in relationship with our capability to see specific wavelenghts of this radiation, and are always connected to the fact that we need physical objects around us to reflect this light. If not there’s no sense about its meaning.

In an empty world without any object reflecting this radiation, the term "light" become completely senseless for us.

The sun is the father of light in all its extension. In our contemporary world, we are not able not create artifical light without the existence of solar radiation. It's an essencial element that serves as a base life and to develop our own systems to replace or complement the natural lighting with the artificial ones...

Light Vs Pigment.

In the mid 90's, when I started my degree in Industrial Design we use to share some subjects with other disciplines like graphic and fashion design. One of this subjects was called "The Colour Theories". I don't thing this has changed so much today - Still the need of explaining the origins and relationships between colours and Applied Arts - 

We all know that light could be coloured as well as paint but, do we know the way to create or mixing colours in light is different than mixing colours with pigments? One difference is that light emits colours while pigments absorb them. In another words: white light contains all colours and with the mecanism of lenses and filters we are able to separate them or isolate one. Colour mixing in this case is additive and their primary colours are red, green and blue. The result of adding all colours together in light terms will be white. 

Furthermore, with pigment colours the mixing is subtractive. Primary colours are cyan, magenta and yellow and the mix of all together will be black. When we see a wall painted in yellow it means that is reflecting yellow light and absorving the rest of the colours , and this is the reason why we can see it. 

There's a huge large amount of nice colour combinations using complementary colours and playing with his luminance and saturation. A nice study book full of colour combinations was made by Joseph Albers: "Interaction of Color". Small ed. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1971, rev. 1974. 

Nevertheless, I am going to share all the scientific matters that you can find in any dedicated post. What I really want to show you is the application of all these theories. 

In order to explain how to paint with light and how to paint with pigments I've choose some images corresponding with two different artists: Sandy Skoglund and James Turrell.

Sandy Skoglund (1946, Quincy (USA) - ) 

These two first images corresponding to Sandy Skoglund (Artist and photographer) works show the way the artist choose to paint with pigments the elements she choose in her photographs. Dramatic themes, replication painted elements with particular colours and their combination are her biggest main installation features. Please, take a while and see the small quantity of vivid colours used and the effect on the rod cells and cone cells of our retina by their combination and contrasts. I must say that is not the same living her intallations inside them, than in a pic on our computer because naturally it converts pigment colours into light colours. Sandy has evolved his technique, sometimes with more strong actions over the physical objects she uses, creating blurry worlds. The reality is suddenly transformed by the pigmentation into another different reality normally closed to the oniric language. These artwork is normally static, while the global impression looks dynamic.

Let's gonna take a look at the next pictures corresponding to James Turrell artworks:

James Turrell (1943, Pasadena, CA (USA) - )

What really surprised me was his ability of transforming spaces painting through the light. The same space/context transforms in something different, with the intrinsic factor of light of changing inmediately. This technique has been applied for different exhibitions in worldwide galleries and  museums like MOMA in NY (picture above), also in arquitecture collaborations in design centres  (PSA - ADN Design Centre in Vélizy) and another different situations. This is one of the most important facets of this artist. You can check online his Timeline Artwork and be sure you'lll be surprised. In the following images you'll see again his pictorical way of create mood-altering ambients. Technological progress has let this artists introduce LED devices  increasing the level of control of his installations. Time and tech plays a major role in this kind of artistic mouvements.

These contemporary artists approaches (J.Turrell and S.Skoglund) lie in transforming the reality by their own particular and different tools -one with the paint can and the other with contemporary light emitters. 

I have been particulary impressed by James Turrell, who started experimenting in this way, with the Light and Space Group in Los Angeles (CA) with Robert Irwin and Doug Wheeler, something that was out of the mind-set of the period . After their first artworks, they have become the starting point for current artists like Olafur Eliasson, Jim Campbell, and many others, each one with their own approaches. James Turrell received a BA in Pomona College in Perceptual Psycology in 1965. Then he finished mathematics, geology and astronomy and finally he received an MA degree in Art from Claremont Graduate School.


I will go back to the artists I mentioned before in future releases to show a wider vision for this fantastic Art phenomenon of the 20th and 21st Centuries that fascinates me.

Welcome to this blog!

Due to the obsession that light in its whole spectrum generates in me since always, I will try to post graphically and comment from my personal point of view this phenomenon in all its manifestations, from natural lighting to artificial lighting systems. 
By the other hand, my excuses if English is not my native language and you find some bad constructions or sentences that are not common. 

Of course we can paint also with light...