“Light As Light: Eight Reflections on Radiant Matter”

I think of this film as a series of poetic (as opposed to scientific)  meditations on the nature and meaning of light, both natural and artificial, earthbound and celestial. True, the film offers a virtual taxonomy of  types of light and sources of light  (e.g. incandescent,  ultraviolent,  fluorescent, neon, bioluminescent / sunlight, moonlight,  fire, et al).  And even though   the film’s eight sections  often have  titles which sound scientific (e.g. “the origins of photosynthesis,  “the domestication of fire,”   “the electrification of  light”) , “Light As Light”  approaches these subjects in a spirit of child-like wonder:  fanciful ,  free associative , and  pre-analytical.  

Above all, the film treats light as an aesthetic phenomenon– as   an artistic medium in its own right rather than  a utilitarian  means to an end outside itself (i.e.  the illumination  of people, objects, or landscapes.) 

Furthermore , the film places a high premium  on musicality, both literal and figurative. The images are accompanied throughout by music or found sound; and the relationship between the visual and the auditory is never arbitrary. In fact, it’s analogous to the correspondence between moving bodies and musical accompaniment which  animates  good choreography. In that sense, the film can be thought of as an exercise in “music visualization.” 

Its first half is almost entirely abstract: shapes and patterns composed of light drift in and out of the frame to the  accompaniment of sound. But these  images  are rarely (if ever)  purely abstract or “formalist” in nature. They invariably  correspond –however indirectly, however fancifully  –to things in the real world  that can be named (e.g.“ specks of light dancing on water…”)

But midway through, a female  mannikin is added to the mix, lending  the film a more representational and emotionally “realistic” dimension. The introduction  of the human figure also helps generate the faint outlines of a “story.” (The blank immobility of the mannikin’s human –but still inanimate–  face functions as  a  “projection screen” for  the viewer’s  emotions.)  

The final third of the film returns to the realm of the non-representational, attempting to find more purely abstract equivalents for the “realistic” emotions generated by close-ups of the mannikin’s face. Consequently, “Light As Light”  has two different goals: The first is to trace a poetic  history of light. The second is to   compare and contrast  the relative virtues of representational vs.  abstract modes of correspondence between art and “the real world.”