{Image Via United Visual Artists
A new display entitled Array by United Visual Artists has me thinking of the future.
One day, which day I dare not suggest, but one day you will be walking alone late in the evening. Whatever events have happened in your life, this particularly night has put you in a place of self-reflection. Perhaps you've been secretly listening to the epic sounds of Explosions in the Sky and wonder has cascaded over you, filled with what if's and maybes. Regardless, you are enjoying a rare moment of solidarity.
It's summer in a place with high humidity, a recent storm has passed leaving standing water in any uneven paved surfaces reflecting a spectrum of light from street lights and shop signs. You approach a darkened green space. As you enter a underneath a canopy of trees the air around instantly drops a few degrees providing only mild relief from summer night heat. Alone in the night, your solace is the flood of memories and thoughts rushing through your head as is always the case when we allow ourselves to listen, but still, an unknown entity remains in the darkness.
{Image Via United Visual Artists
With the city light now in the distance, you're greeted by something. A single tubular standing green light illuminates with your next step, sounding a harmonious tone. Another step with a similar happening, only this time with a complimentary tone and light to the previous. This continues as you travel through the no longer lonely night, each action followed by a direct and opposite reaction illuminating the night air space with light and sound.
For a moment, your mind is preoccupied as you explore your new spatial playmate. The show ends however as you realize you traveled to the end of the park. No more lights, no more sound, darkness and silence again short from only crickets and fireflies. Just as the alone feeling begins to permeate the air is once again illuminated by a giant screen of light. Immediately you see your thoughts and memories visually and audibly displayed, some have been since forgotten, now relived shedding "new light" on how you've arrived at your current situation.
{Image Via United Visual Artists}
"How is this happening?" You ask yourself how such an odd occurrence conceived itself from a relatively normal night and private memories? You'll come to realize you've experienced what will be called a New Light park, a space using your interaction through the tubular light field to which in ways yet unknown records your inner most thoughts, presenting them back to you in a way which is untethered by preconceived notions and worldly distractions, in hopes that you gain a greater understanding of yourself and those around you.
In the way that a stroll through nature would once calm the senses and allow for this inner-reflection, in a new era where unbounded wilderness is scarce, these New Light Parks will become essential for subdueing tensions in overcrowded cities.
{Image Via United Visual Artists}