Shy Lights, 2014

Urban Visuals
Nathan Whitford - Toronto, Canada

Interactive Installation

In the city at night, a circular spot of light might represent performance or surveillance. In each case, light aims to illuminate its subject. But what if lights instead resisted their subjects? What if those lights were shy?

Shy Lights explores the distinction between spotlight and searchlight by reversing the roles of light and subject. Six beams of light act as anti-spotlights that move to avoid illuminating participants in this interactive installation.

By lighting only the empty space between participants, the lights themselves become the subjects, performers in a playful dance of pursuit and avoidance.

Nathan Whitford and Konstantinos Mavromichalis together form Urban Visuals, founded in Vancouver in 1994 and now based in Toronto and London, UK.

Urban Visuals’ light-based art installations include Good Bones (Come Up To My Room, Toronto, 2014), lightbridge (Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, Toronto, 2013), 125 Steps (Vancouver 125, Vancouver, 2011), and lightmodal (Surrey, BC, 2011). Their work has also been featured at Vancouver’s 2010 Cultural Olympiad and Illuminate Yaletown (2009, 2011, 2012) and Ottawa’s Winterlude (2013).

Learn More

www.urbanvisuals.com/Shy-Lights

59

Duncan Street & Queen Street West (South of Queen Street)

This project is outdoors.