An LED Perspective On The Eternal Question Of Time

Forest of Time

According to sages in the disciplines of science, philosophy, and spirituality, Time and Space are essentially linked, and all phenomena—including thought—unfold upon the canvas that they together comprise. It takes time for photons of light to reach our senses, and indeed for embodied beings such as ourselves time is, essentially, inseparable from life itself.

Sookyoung Kong‘s interactive LED pieces emphasize the essence of time as contained in our observation of natural phenomena, such as the depiction of the changing appearance of the moon’s reflection on the surface of a pond.

Moonrise

In Moonrise, the viewer can hold a small box finely perforated throughout and illuminated with LED from within. As the viewer maneuvers the position of the box this way and that, the shape of the moon fluctuates from crescent to full.

The World in the Pot

In The World in the Pot, the viewer pours out “worlds” from 3 different traditional Korean pots onto a “puddle”—a surface fitted with motion sensors—to manifest organically undulating, projected images that directly reflect the viewer’s particular movements.

Forest of Time, displayed at the top, steeps the viewer in acute awareness of one’s own presence, as vertically standing structures each display varying patterns of blue LEDs as one passes nearby. This deep immersion in the passing of time as facilitated through our contact with sensor technology invites the revelation that we are embodied creatures moving together with all the universe in linear time, but that at the same time our consciousness itself is quite possibly what begets the world of time in the first place.