August 2013 – Evan Lindorff-Ellery

I was in an unknown room. It was dimly lit, with some natural light coming through the windows, and maybe one artificial light source somewhere, but I could not identify from where. There was a projection of a three-dimensional bird, like a cartoon bird, a rendering of a bird, flying around. It had a light source that provided its movement. It was just a rendering. It swooped and curled in the air, like a bird in a Disney cartoon. It seemed very happy. Then I was trying to explain to my mother how it worked. I was sitting with her in the dark room, explaining how light worked. I was using a large print of an abstract painting as an example. I think it was by Kandinsky, and had enormous colorful circles drawn around and into each other. I told her that in order for us to see the print, light had to land on it, and either the pigment on the print would reflect the light or absorb the light. The pigment that reflected parts of the light spectrum would be seen, for instance, as red or blue or yellow, and other parts of the light spectrum would not be seen, because they would be absorbed. She didn’t really understand. She didn’t understand that if there was no light, there would be no color on the print to be seen. And that if it was a black print, it would be absorbing all of the light spectrum. Black absorbs everything. Anyway, I was telling her this because apparently they figured out how to project the light of the bird, and somehow the light stopped mid-air, without being reflected or absorbed by a physical object. It just stayed in the air, and I didn’t understand how that happened.