The installation instruments are so sensitive they can register a heartbeat, or the blink of an eye.
Celestial Vaulting
Funded by The Michigan Council for the Arts, Celestial Vaulting was originally created for a two person exhibition with Yoko Ono at the Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, 1990. The project was also curated for the world premiere of MECHANIKA at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1991. The MECHANIKA exhibition included leading artists in the field, Charles Ray, Chris Burden, Bruce Nauman, and Survival Research Labs. Celestial Vaulting was also exhibited at the South Carolina State Museum. Columbia, South Carolina, 1992 as a part of the Southern Exposure exhibition.
Celestial Vaulting is an holographic interferometry installation that uses real-time optical laser holography to determine the minute time-of-flight difference between phase entangled photon pairs. Magnifying wavefronts of laser light 25 million times their actual size, the delicate balance and isolation of the instruments in the artwork's optical system register spatio-temporal fluctuations as small as 250 millionths of a meter. The artwork is so sensitive it can register a heartbeat, or the blink of an eye. As an individual enters the exhibition space, they walk on to the surface of a massive isolation table floating in space.
With the artwork removed from direct contact with the building, the visitors presence in the space produces infinitesimally small mechanical and acoustical vibrations that dilate and change the time travel of the photon's in the art works delicate instruments.
The dilated travel time of the photon's produce stunning modulated holographic patterns and audible sound. The audible sound is created by the light from the holographic interference pattern being converted via custom photonics and electronics into electric current then amplified into sound.
The electrical signal created by the holographic pattern is routed to an array of hundreds of tiny mirrorized loud speakers installed on the face of a large parabolic satellite dish. Much like a search light, a 100,000 candle power fully rectified direct-current light source at the center of curvature of the satellite dish projects light on to the tiny mirrored speakers, and the reflected light projects hundreds of scintillating stars of light on to the wall, and into the surrounding exhibition space.
The speakers lining the satellite dish have their volume adjusted so that they are inaudible, however the surface of the speakers is modulated creating complex three-dimensional standing sound waves (cymatics). These inaudible sound waves encode the light reflected from the surface satellite dish with amplitude modulated light, light that contains the dramatic sound of the holographic patterns.
Museum visitors wear specially designed headphones that listen to light, and allow them to bath in the light and sound that is created by their presence in the artwork.