one hundred thousand years and eight minutes (proposal for installation)
2019
virtual reality

It’s a commonly traded fact that a photon of light leaving the sun takes about 8 minutes to reach the Earth. A far less commonly heard fact is that the same photon, having been born in the fusion reactor of the sun’s core, can take up to 100,000 years to get from that core to the surface of the star.

When we see something, of course we’re seeing light striking off of that something. What we sometimes forget is that for a person to register that light striking against a surface, it has to then ricochet from that object into a waiting eye - a tiny aperture. The rest of that light goes everywhere else - into the eyes of others, into the earth, back in to space. There’s just so impossibly much of the stuff.

But as individuals, we get to celebrate those photons that, one hundred thousand years and 8 minutes later, fly in to our eyes and come to rest in our minds. These are the ones we get to keep.

It’s a funny thing with light – We have no trouble seeing where it comes from or seeing where it goes - but we never see it on its way. I think that’s what this piece is about. At the very end of that very long trip, we can bend it and fold it, ask it to dance and see how it flows.