SHL is delighted to share that Artist-in-Residence Ian Winters’ Domestic Light project will be in residence at the Lab from May through SHL Week. He will be assembling and testing the work-in-progress light and sound installation for the project with open drop-in hours Fridays from 1p-4p in the lead-up to SHL week. Feel free to drop by to learn more about the light module/instruments, data set and other parts of this multi-year project spanning more than 40 countries.

About the Domestic Light project

Domestic Light is an ongoing international art-and-research project led by Lab artist-in-residence Ian Winters that investigates the relation between light, home, time and our perception of the same through sustained multispectral observation.

Since June 21^st 2023, a global network of collaborators has hosted custom-built multispectral sensors on domestic windowsills. Across diverse time zones and geographies, these devices continuously record the color of interior and exterior light and gather spectral information beyond the RGB space of screens and projections.

With the primary 2 years of data collection complete, the resulting dataset composes an idiosyncratic, anecdotal yet planetary-scale record: everyday rhythms, seasonal variation, light as it is inhabited and shaped by the happenstance and hazards of daily life. Collaborators move, sensor contacts, wi-fi, conflict zones, packages and power are lost and regained across more than 70 locations, with traces left latent in the intensity data collected every 5 seconds from near IR to near UV range.

The SHL exhibition showcases the current stage of the work, as Domestic Light completes its primary data-gathering phase and moves to performance and installation. It centers on a scale version of the installation that fills SHL with 24 of the multispectral LED light/sound modules created for the project. Constructed as an immersive and open sphere the installation animates and geolocates the spectral record and associated sonic traces and provides a look back in time as the light fades and rises around the earth over the project’s time span.

Locations: https://domesticlight.art/locations

The sensor network extends across North America and Latin America, across Europe, across Southeast Asia, and across Oceania and brings together coastal and inland settings, urban and rural environments, spanning a plurality of the earth’s time zones.

Collaborators, Partners and Credits

The project’s initial commission with supported by Hewlett/Creative Work Fund and the Rainin Family Foundation along with services and materials grants from AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Cree LED. The project was created in partnership with institutional partners Leonardo/ISAST, Djerassi Resident Artist Program, SFartsED and the Minnesota Street Project, and the Sussex Humanities Lab.

Learn more about the Domestic Light project at https://domesticlight.art