Crafting for spirituality: projected light as a model for the cultural imagination

Abstract

The increasing visibility of works in public settings using projection systems creates a range of potentials for the arts and cultural communities. Projection and projection mapping systems offer new possibilities for the display and visibility of media imagery, and they do so in forms which are not subject to the teleological constraints of screens as display surfaces. The shift from the framed, determined space of the screen to a potentially infinite range of image spaces, has implications for representation at its most fundamental levels. In contrast to the fixed, culturally determined praxis of the image within the "frame" of the screen, projection is both a transformation of objects and spaces, and a perpetually liminal process. Between the virtual and the extant, projected light is indeterminate both spatially and temporally. Projection operates as a series of potentials, modeling a metaphysics that breaks with Cartesian duality. Projected light, in breaking with the language of the screen, offers a model of the media text as neither fixed or persistent, providing both a cue to the imagination and a perspective for metaphysical inquiry.