Designer: Alexander Knox
Year: 2008
Kinetic light installation
Maxims of Behaviour plays across the distinctive 10-storey, 1960s' facade of Royal Mail House. Set among the giant billboards and screens of the south-eastern corner of the Bourke and Swanston Streets, Alexander Knox's Kinetic light work can be seen each winter evening from dusk till late, until 2012.
The work features colourful abstract imagery that moves spectral-like across the facade transforming the site into a dynamic entity, a living thing that inhabits the area. The imagery is produced from abstract video footage of the city's light, colour and movement, and it acts as a mimetic device that echoes and feed soff it's surrounds. The installation becomes an integral part of the nightscape, complementing the floodlit surroundings, creating an organic synthisis of movement and light. Thetitle of the work is inspired by Lewis carroll's poem 'Phantasmagoria;, in which the author draws an insitful parallel between ghosts and us.
Some 88 multi-coloured LED lights mounted on the ledges of the building facade produce the moving montage of light, This matrix of computer-controlled lights projects onto the surface of the building, with each light effectively acting as a pixel. Each night the average energy consumption is equivalent to running a 2400W small electric heater. The LEDs have a lifespan of 100,000 hours; they are very low maitenance and run on green energy
Year: 2008
Kinetic light installation
Maxims of Behaviour plays across the distinctive 10-storey, 1960s' facade of Royal Mail House. Set among the giant billboards and screens of the south-eastern corner of the Bourke and Swanston Streets, Alexander Knox's Kinetic light work can be seen each winter evening from dusk till late, until 2012.
The work features colourful abstract imagery that moves spectral-like across the facade transforming the site into a dynamic entity, a living thing that inhabits the area. The imagery is produced from abstract video footage of the city's light, colour and movement, and it acts as a mimetic device that echoes and feed soff it's surrounds. The installation becomes an integral part of the nightscape, complementing the floodlit surroundings, creating an organic synthisis of movement and light. Thetitle of the work is inspired by Lewis carroll's poem 'Phantasmagoria;, in which the author draws an insitful parallel between ghosts and us.
Some 88 multi-coloured LED lights mounted on the ledges of the building facade produce the moving montage of light, This matrix of computer-controlled lights projects onto the surface of the building, with each light effectively acting as a pixel. Each night the average energy consumption is equivalent to running a 2400W small electric heater. The LEDs have a lifespan of 100,000 hours; they are very low maitenance and run on green energy
