Interlinear
A commission from The Crown Estate for a large scale permanent lightwork to running between Regent Street and Saville Row in London as part of the redevelopment of New Burlington Place. The design was commissioned but never built.
"Interlinear - adj. written or printed with text in different languages or versions on alternate lines.
Four lines of intense coloured light float through the length of New Burlington Place from Regent Street to Saville Row. Formed by clusters of RGB LED lights encased in acrylic the light-lines fragment as a spectator moves away from an ideal viewing position to reveal an array of twenty stone columns placed in series.
The piece invites a mobile spectator to explore the relationship between the 'picture' or 'image' – the illusion of four unbroken lines apparently running from Saville Row to Regent Street – and it’s actual, serried construction.
As the spectator moves from either of the ideal viewing points, created on Saville Row and Regent Street, the formation of the columns appears to open up as he or she follows the implied path of the 'image' to the building entrance. Each of the intersecting lines that form this 'image' corresponds to a specific datum particular to the rise and fall of ground level on New Burlington Place, to play a true horizontal off against the incline of the site. To a mobile spectator this rise and fall is articulated by the 'movement' of the lines up and down the columns in relation to their eyelevel.
Each column stands between 3.8m and 4.7m high and is faced with Portland Stone to match the building. From a distance the bands of coloured light appear to float in space as the stone columns recede into the building and release the ‘image’ from its ground.
The piece uses the whole of the corridor-like site that connects Regent Street and Saville Row to produce a complex optical effect that combines illusionism and spectacle to compound and animate the linear perspective of the space, and the viewers position within it.
text from project proposal. © Graham Ellard & Stephen Johnstone 2003.
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