2025
animations on varying scale LED panels
The body of work Light in Flight explores how we perceive time at, or close to, the speed of light.
Presented on LED displays of varying scales, each study reveals a physical space illuminated by photons, emitted in pulses by a laser and captured by a camera designed to detect single photons. The ‘light-captures’ create time-lapse sequences which reveal ‘light-waves’ in motion, depicting space as it sculpts the light.
Created through an experimental process of setting up a laser and photon detector in various darkened locations – from architectural spaces to paper-constructed stage sets – the animations represent the propagation and the ‘noise’ of light, even sometimes capturing cosmic rays.
As the light bounces around the space, like a sphere extending outwards, it appears to behave counter-intuitively. A pulse of light coming towards us does not arrive in the order that we experience on a human timescale, but arrives in reverse, due to the geometry of the photon’s paths towards us.
The resulting pointilist like images teeter on the edge of readability: as patterns come in and out of legibility they challenge our interpretation of what we are seeing. The works encourage an awareness of the physical sensation of seeing, making us conscious of what our brain is normally doing instinctively.
The series shows how when we slow down the speed of light to a frame rate which makes it visible to the human eye, revealing its quantum properties, our sense of perspective in time and space is thrown into question, and asks how it is we can see space outside of time.
Created through their collaboration with physicists at the University of Glasgow’s Extreme Light Group, who investigate quantum photonics.
Thanks to Daniele Faccio, Ash Lyons and Sam Nerenberg.
Residency curator, Professor Sarah Cook, University of Glasgow.
Funded by the University of Glasgow.
Film-maker Thomas Riedelsheimer filmed Semiconductor’s journey with the scientists as part of a new documentary, Tracing Light.
