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23/6/2005

Camera Lucida

I-20 Gallery, New York

Sonochemical Observatory. By Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand

I-20 presents a project by Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, their second collaboration with the gallery. Last June they enabled rooftop viewers to experience a rare celestial event: the passage of Venus between the Sun and the Earth.

Unlike countless artworks that attempt to evoke a state of synesthesia, their current project, Camera Lucida, is a continually evolving light sculpture that allows one to see sound moving through space – right at the delicate horizon where acoustics and optics meet. By means of a phenomenon called sonoluminescence, sound waves are directly converted into light inside a glass chamber filled with gas-infused liquid. After adapting to the absolute darkness surrounding the installation, the viewer/listener gradually perceives the highly detailed shapes and movements of multiple sound sources. Previously, the only way to view sonoluminescence has been in a highly specialized sonochemical laboratory. Now it is in an altogether different environment. Camera Lucida presents the first opportunity for people outside the scientific community to experience this rare phenomenon.

Researchers have been probing sonoluminescence since 1934. Though the phenomenon still cannot be fully explained, it is known that the light emanates from imploding microscopic gas bubbles triggered by an acoustic field, which renders sound visible. In this conversion of sound into light, temperatures are produced that are as high as those found on the surface of the Sun.

Created over the past three years in collaboration with scientific laboratories in Japan, Germany, Belgium, Russia, the United States, and Belarus, Camera Lucida is among the largest displays of sonoluminescence in the world. The artwork was created by the Russian/American team of Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, who are part of a new generation of artists linking the legendary frontiers of the techno-scientific west and the spiritual east.

Employing ephemeral materials and rejecting the use of fixative and recording media, Domnitch and Gelfand create art works that exist as ever transforming phenomena, offered for observation. Their projects have been exhibited at White Box, New York; The Museum of Dreams, St. Petersburg; Softopia, Japan; Mains d’Oeuvres, Paris; Quartier Ephemere, Montreal; Netmage, Bologna; The Minsk Planetarium, Belarus; Nokia Lab, Moscow.

Opening: June 23, 2005, 6-8PM

I-20 Gallery
529 West 20th Street
New York

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