Laddie John Dill’s “Light Sentences,” an ongoing series, explores the science and aesthetics of electric light. Dill credits his stepfather, who engineered night vision devices, with igniting his interest in technologically mediated perceptions of light. They are composed of discrete colored segments arranged in sequences, as if they were words comprising distinct phrases. They play with our tendency to “read” such alignments, whether or not we take them in as whole entities. We scan them left to right when horizontal, top to bottom when vertical. And despite the hard science behind the process, the emitted colors and resulting effect on the viewer depend on the noble gases’ sometimes unpredictable reactions to electric current. Dill has described these mercurial works as living things, revealing their true nature only once the power switches on.
The Brooklyn Rail | November 2022 | In Conversation
