A Wordless Place of Light and Space

an interactive light installation developed with photographer Kostas Dimitreas, Greece

"The ... most effective [installation on] the theme of light and time was Kostas Dimitreas and Charlie Levin's timed-light recordings projects on gauzy screens, A Wordless Place of Light and Space, ... [working] spatially with projected light, bringing to mind ideas of ephemera, memory, and distance.

"Although forms of media change as quickly as technology advances, artists have been incorporating technology — as subject matter and/or as medium — for the better part of the Modern era. From experimental film to kinetic sculpture, work that falls under the label 'new technology' has been engaged in virtually ever art-world dialogue of the twentieth century. Most exhibitions of technolgically based art, however, fix an intent gaze upon the newness of the materials. By obsessively focusing on the wonders of the present and the potential for the future, they deny the art-work an art-historical context, sapping from it whatever power it has to communicate by emphasizing its (often limiting) ability to dazzle.

A two-day event that exhibited, screened, and staged both new and historical works of art, including static and interactive objects, film, video, and performance, 'Light & Time' succeeded not only in spotlighting current technology, but in providing a conceptual and historical basis for it as well. Curator and Chicago inter-media artist Kathleen Kirka linked the various piece together with an emphasis on meaning over form.

Different speed projections coming from different angles projected onto translucent chiffon screens layered different speeds and textures into an intangible environment of light. As people moved through the space, their shadows fell in unexpected ways as the chiffon both picked up the shadow and passed it on in distortion. Shadows also allowed different images to become more visible by blocking one or the other sources of light. 

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chiffon, pipe, projections 
each panel 84 x 96 inches

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Exhibitions 
Light & Time  / Chicago Filmmakers / Chicago / 1994
The MVSEVM / Chicago Actors Ensemble / Chicago / 1995