Exhibitions with light

About a month ago I went to the Broad museum in Los Angeles and waited four hours to get into the Infinity Room exhibit there. The Infinity Room is a light installation created by installation artist
Yayoi Kusama, and it is made up of a black room walled with mirrors, with tiny LED globes hanging from the ceiling. One person can spend up to sixty seconds in the room, which flashes and pulses with light. It is one of the most beautiful light installations I have ever seen. I am always interested in light installations because light is so much harder to control than paint. LED light, fast becoming the replacement for incandescent bulbs, can emit bright light for a fraction of the energy cost, so this exhibit can stay lit all day with little energy cost. The quality of the light in this exhibit is clearly brighter and more blue-toned, which makes for almost star-like imagery. It's almost as if you are standing in outer-space, when locked inside the mirror-walled room. To me, what is most fascinating is the fact that this installation is itself made from simply items: mirrors, plastic, and little LEDs - I reached out and touched one of the little balls and they are just some form of plastic. Nothing special. And the thing that transforms the environment from a room with plastic and mirrors into a sparkling galactic experience is light. 

Infinity Room, photo credit: Broad website