Body / Light I, 2021

Screen, computer, sensors, custom tracking system

 

Random International’s Body / Light I draws inspiration from Pablo Picasso’s famed ‘light drawings’ for LIFE magazine in 1949. Seeking to reflect a shift in authorship from a single creator to collective and multi-disciplinary creation processes, Random International took inspiration from a year-long collaboration with BMW i and the precise, minimalist culture of their design group as well as the technologies enabling the electrification of mobility in order to develop this new body of work.

Random International introduced the series through this interactive outdoor installation, providing a platform and creation process that is instinctively and widely accessible to the public. Body / Light I viewers are invited to take part in the experiential exhibition by drawing with their bodies as their movements are temporarily traced in light. The emphasis is on the physicality of the shared experience of creation and the documentation of this process in all its rawness, imperfection, and beauty.

To echo and foster the improvisational spirit of the work, Body / Light I was presented with a score performed live by composer and multi-instrumental musician Lester St. Louis, along with scheduled choreographic responses to the sculpture by three dancers from the New York Theatre Ballet.

Body / Light I was presented by Brookfield Arts and Superblue and premiered as Manhattan West’s inaugural public art experience in 2021.