It is not yet morning. Deepavali, the festival of lights, is still a few hours away. There is darkness everywhere. The sun asleep. The sky wearing an ink black sheath with silver stars sequinned asymmetrically.
Darkness seems mighty. Invincible. Suddenly, a wanton ray of light peeps through the window slit. Audacious enough to break the monotony of the night. That tiny slanting ray conquers darkness. I stare at the bright ray and wonder whether it had travelled 1,86,282 miles per second to come to me. Possibly not. That ray looked too pretty to have such ferocity in its gait. I was captivated.
What really is light? A particle, as Albert Einstein viewed. A wave phenomenon as Rene Descartes theorised. Is light one of the five fundamental subtle elements (tanmatra) out of which emerge the gross elements? That's what the ancient Samkhya philosophers concluded. My thoughts were getting tangled in the dark night. The light peeping from the window slit grew bigger. Brighter. So did my intrigue.
The Vaisheshika school thinks of light rays as a stream of high velocity of tejas (fire) atoms while Indian Buddhists such as Dignaga of 5th century and Dharmakirti of 7th century describe atomic entities as momentary flashes of light or energy. Can one step beyond philosophy and metaphor and think of light as a tool? Life has been harnessing light ever since the first primitive organisms evolved light-sensitive tissues. Modern technology is prodding us to believe that with a bit of persuasion, light would show us things we thought we would never see. Really?
What really is light? Particle? Waves? Energy? Tool? Who am I? Just a momentary flash of light? Is light just part of god's paradoxes? Light and dark. Day and night. Joy and sorrow. Black and white. Can light really sprint 1,86,282 miles per second, the speed scientists believe it travels in a vacuum? Does light obey very strict geometric rules, as Isaac Newton computed? Is my eye a photon detector that uses visible light to learn about the world around? I wouldn't know. I am absolutely daft at mathematics. And science. I cannot compute life — or anything — through algorithms. Light brightens my life. Chases the darkness. That's all I know of light. That's all there is to know.
In that dark night, few hours before Deepavali, light had chased darkness away. I wanted to hold light in my hand. No, not like superhero with a light sabre. I wanted to paint with light. Like a deft artist using light as an emulsion. To paint a daffodil with light. Perhaps an old abbey. Perhaps a swan. To add glimmer to a pair of large eyes. To create a halo. I wish I could spread light on a canvas. And paint.
Light as paint? Hours before Deepavali, I sure wasn't hurtling towards the absurd. Not quite. I was merely hoping to be arty with light. Like James Turrell, the American artist who started experimenting with light as early as 1966. In his first light projection, Turrell covered the windows of a California hotel, allowing only prescribed amounts of light from the street outside to come through the openings.
Light entered magnificently and Turrell took to light as his artistic medium. Later, in the former Mendota Hotel, Turrell controlled the window apertures to allow natural and artificial light to enter in specific ways, creating a unique light show. Turrell is also known for his light tunnels and light projections that create shapes that seem to have mass and weight, though they are created with only light.
Turrell, certainly, is a pioneer, but he is not the only light artist. Not many have forgotten ghostly silhouettes moving in and out of two A-posts in Madison Square, New York. The dead had not risen in the city. Artist Jim Campbell had hung a net of 2,000 LEDs from the A-posts which turned on and off when visitors walked by. Watched from a hundred feet away, Campbell's 2010 light installation, 'Scattered Light', resembled a thoroughfare for ghosts.
Robert Irwin's installation, 'Dotting the i's and Crossing the t's', consisted of three 16-foot-tall transparent acrylic columns that disappeared under a particular set of lighting conditions while Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's 'Pulse Room' was a series of incandescent light bulbs that flashed at the exact rate of a participant's heart when he or she held an interface placed on a side of the room.
These installation artists use light as a medium. Ever heard of light painters? They hold the light source in their hand and draw with light on a black background. It is art — graceful movements by the light painter who holds the light, quite like the painter with a brush in his hand. Light painting is not a 21st century fad. 'Prounenraum' (Proun room) (1923), by El Lissitzky, is considered by many art historians to be the first time an artist incorporated architectural lighting elements as a component integral to his work. In 1940, Man Ray, an American modernist, began making light paintings; he was the first known art photographer to use the technique. One of the most popular professional light painting artists using this technique is Licht Faktor Crew from Germany — they use software programs, handheld light sources and cameras to create pictures and amazing light picture shows.
Light, however, has been used by artists even in the olden days. Tad differently, though. Ever looked at Vincent van Gogh's painting, 'Starry Night', in which the powerful sky sits over a quiet town, brightened by the crescent moon and stars? 'Starry Nights' has been interpreted in various ways, the most prominent being the depiction of Hope on the canvas. Art historians believe that van Gogh was showing that even with a dark night it is still possible to see light in the windows of the houses; with shining stars filling the sky, there is always light to guide you.
Back in time
Go back further in time and walk into the studio of Leonardo da Vinci who used light and shadow, rather than lines, to define three-dimensional objects. Oscar Claude-Monet took to the method of painting the same scene many times in order to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons. He knew a lily pond or a church spire looks different with the light falling on it differently at different hours. Between 1892 and 1893, Monet painted more than 30 views of Rouen Cathedral in France. As the day progressed, Monet moved from one canvas to another painting the cathedral to explore the effects of light and colour on the gothic façade of the building through different times of the day. Light is so incredibly palpable on Monet's Rouen's canvasses.
Not only artists, even dancers are using light in their art. Light dancers and glow dancers are choreographing stories in the dark with light as their sole prop. The LED dancers wear glow dresses and can appear and disappear on/off stage in a heartbeat. In a dark auditorium, the lights moving on stage create surreal illusions of movement and depth.
Perhaps nothing beats the beauty of light when poets talk lyrically about its contrasting significance. In Ode to Blindness, John Milton's light stands for the poet's life and, possibly, his sight, which he worries about having wasted in the eyes of his God. In There's a Certain Slant of Light, Emily Dickinson says that the illumination comes from the heavens but is in no way joyous, while Henry Vaughan refers to light as symbolising heavenly glory in They are all Gone into the World of Light.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti uses the image of sudden light to express a feeling of deja vu, and William Shakespeare talked Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile in Love's Labour's Lost. For Ezra Pound, light was the informing principle of the universe — all things that are, are lights, as Irish philosopher Johannes Scotus Eriugena so succinctly said. Dylan Thomas writes of light as representing life-in-death in Light Breaks Where no Sun Shines. And who can ever forget Rabindranath Tagore's poem titled Light, where he writes:
Light, my light, the world-filling light, the eye-kissing light, heart-sweetening light!
Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the center of my life; the light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love...
Deepavali, the festival of lights, is still a few hours away. I watch the darkness fade and that little ray of light grow bigger and bigger. So big that I feel the mighty sun is sitting on my windowsill. There's no darkness anymore. There's light everywhere. Perhaps God said, Let there be Light. And there was light everywhere.
Happy Deepavali!
Light verse
On National Poetry Day 2015, 10 poets picked their favourite poems on light:
1 Sally Crabtree: 'Light' byRabindranath Tagore
2 Joseph Coelho: 'Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night' by Dylan Thomas
3 Rachel Rooney: 'The Sun Never Says' by Hafiz
4 Liz Brownlee: 'The Owl and the Pussycat' by Edward Lear
5 Paul Cookson: 'Bomber's Moon' by Mike Harding
6 Jan Dean: 'Silver' by Walter de la Mare
7 Deborah Alma: 'Moonlit Apples' by John Drinkwater
8 Indigo Williams: 'The Lights' by Miriam Nash
9 Brian Moses: 'Escape at Bedtime' by Robert Louis Stevenson
10 Roger Stevens: 'A Light Exists in Spring' by Emily Dickinson
Light years
3000 BC Candles are invented
AD 900 Muhammad ibn Zakarîya Râzi (Rhazes) invents the kerosene lamp
AD 1000 First street lamps appear in Cordoba, al-Andalus
AD 1792 William Murdoch starts experimenting with gas lighting
AD 1805 Philips and Lee's Cotton Mill, Manchester, is the first industrial factory to be fully lit by gas
AD 1875 Henry Woodward patents an electric light bulb
AD 1879 Thomas Edison & Joseph Wilson Swan patent the carbon-thread incandescent lamp. It lasts 40 hrs
AD 1880 Edison produces a 16w light bulb that lasts 1500 hrs
AD 1910 Georges Claude demonstrates neon lighting at the Paris Motor Show
AD 1925 The first internal frosted light bulbs are produced
AD 1926 Edmund Germer patents the fluorescent lamp
AD 1991 Philips invents a fluorescent light bulb that lasts 60,000 hrs
AD 2008 Ushio Lighting demonstrates the first LED filament light bulb
On light...
"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." ― Leonard Cohen
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." ― Martin Luther King Jr
"I see black light." ― Victor Hugo's last words
"Light. Light. The visiblereminder of Invisible Light." ― T S Eliot
"It takes darkness to be aware of the light." ― Treasure Tatum
"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." ― Plato
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Let there be light
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