‘COLOUR CHORDS’ INSTALLATION
1400 DUPONT STREET

This installation in the main space at 1400 Dupont Street, Toronto, remained in situ for one year.

12 south-facing clerestory windows, each 2’ x 2’, were filled with coloured mouth-blown glass. A multi-storied west wall acted as a ‘projection screen’.

On sunny mornings the 12 square windows appeared on the wall as light projections, one at a time, ‘growing’ from left to right - within half an hour all 12 colours were projecting in a long line on the wall.

The projection then evolved much more slowly, as the sun angle shifted, moving from the wall to the floor. At noon all the squares were on the floor, perpendicular to the window plane.

The increasingly slanted parallelograms spent the rest of the afternoon gradually moving eastward along the floor in the grand space. By late afternoon, they blurred and weakened, and finally disappeared.

The yearly sun cycle was given heightened visibility by this installation. In wintertime, with low sun angles, projections were directed deep into the space on the projection wall. At the equinoxes, the sun angle was closer to 45 degrees, and the line of colour moved down the centre of the floor space. In summer, the high sun angle and deep window ledge allowed only a fine line of projection or obscured it completely.

Spectacular coloured shadows and the varied spread of light on floor surfaces, lighting elements, ceilings, and window ledges were elements of spatial transformation.

For me, this installation served as a working model – a prototype for use of sun cycles in spaces of continuous/long-term inhabitation - capturing the sun’s movement, bringing it into vivid focus for the users/inhabitants of the environment. It was an observatory too…of aspects of light made visible by colour.