2025.09.24 Extracting Color X Lightsail
This set of exhibitions translates the dynamics of environmental processes and interventions into immersive and spatial explorations in multimedia and color. EXTRACTING COLOR: SULFUR MINING IN KAWAH IJEN, INDONESIA visualizes the chemical and social complexities of sulphur mining in Kawah Ijen through chromatic gradients and documentary media. LIGHTSAIL investigates the nature of wind through an interactive visualization of light and color, reflecting the interplay of natural forces and temporal change.
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EXTRACTING COLOR: SULFUR MINING IN KAWAH IJEN, INDONESIA
Anson Leung
Michelle Li
Extracting Color is a multimedia installation that visualizes the physical and chemical transformation of sulphur through color. This project proposes an innovative method for spatial-temporal drawing by mapping sulphur as a chromatic gradient unfolding at two speeds: the slow, geologic timescale of volcanic degassing and accelerated, labor-intensive process of mining sulphur. The Chroma-tomographic Drawing takes cross sections of the Ijen crater, revealing how the color encodes information about temperature, material state, chemical composition, and energy transfer of landscape processes.
Through photo-documentary color books and film screening, this project reveals and critiques the socio-political imbalances inherent within extractive landscapes. Kawah Ijen is simultaneously a hazardous mining site and a tourist destination to witness “Api Biru”, the electric-blue fire when superheated sulphur dioxide combusts. Extracting Color represents sulphur as a dynamic landscape process and humans as entropic agents within broader systems of extraction, consumption, and displacement.
LIGHTSAIL
Marc Dunand
Inspired by Haans Haacke’s Blue Sail, this piece is a translation of the gusting irregularity of wind over time. Lightsail uses a custom-built galvanometer to project a shortwave near-ultraviolet laser onto a phosphorescent sail fluttering in the wind of a fan. Controlled by programs designed in TouchDesigner, the galvanometer rapidly moves the point of the laser, resulting in the illusion of continuous shapes. The phosphorescent sail is excited by the high-energy light of the laser, causing it to glow wherever it is struck. This results in the sail fleetingly capturing a record of its own shifting motion as the wind changes the relative positions of the laser’s point and the sail.
