TYPOLOGY: Lighting + Kinetic INSTALLATION
YEAR: 2023-25
ChronoWave is an exploration of depicting time through alternative, fluid, synchronous movement. Learning from origami folding of paper, and tessellation patterns, and exploring folding as a means of fabrication, ChronoWave captures time as light in motion. A folded ribbon of metal spirals with the rhythm of a clock, its glow tracing waves of illumination across space. Inspired by chronophotography, the capture of motion as an overlapping composition of still images, ChronoWave depicts time, not in increments, but in geometry, in states of being, in ever-changing form. It portrays spatial moments flowing into each other. ChronoWave is at once an artistic gesture, a light sculpture, and a timepiece.
Chronophotography is a method of depicting movement in still photography through the overlap of multiple moving images. The forms that arise from this “static movement” were inspirational in the design of ChronoWave. The movements and poses in sports and in dance, as well as the forms of moving birds informed the sculptural statement curve of ChronoWave, which is never static, but always appears new and different from different viewpoints and at different times of the day.
ChronoWave doubles as a kinetic clock: its spiral form slowly rotates to mark the passage of time. Instead of hands on a dial, the form of the lamp itself becomes the timekeeper. The mechanical system is driven by a silent stepper motor connected to the cable and concealed in the ceiling, calibrated to rotate the spiral at a precise rate (one revolution per 12 hours). A timekeeping controller governs the motor, ensuring accuracy like clockwork movement. The spiral’s slow, seamless motion transforms the lamp into both light source and timepiece. So instead of looking at a number or a hand, you “read” time in the many orientations of the spiral: the sculpture itself is the chronometer. Unlike conventional clocks that measure time in discrete ticks, Chronowave visualizes time as continuous flow. The turning spiral is a metaphor for waves and cycles — of light, of motion, of life rhythms.
