'Nightvision'
Two-screen synchronised video projection.
13 mins 20 secs.

'Nightvision' shows two mutually dependent visions produced by a crew that Chodzko put together of lighting technicians (‘sparks’) who facilitate the lighting for clubs and concerts. Chodzko wanted to work with people who normally remain out of visibility, in the semi-darkness of ‘back stage’ space. He asked them to light a wood at night as though it was heaven. Their preparation for this illumination is undertaken in semi-darkness but made visible by the sickly false ‘light’ of an image-intensifier lens. Their individual visions of how ‘heaven’ should be lit manifests itself through voice-over. There is a huge disparity between the contradictory, idealising nature of their verbal recommendations (some very technical, some more poetic) and the actual visual reality of the illumination that results. They are ‘experts’ used to creating fictions so are totally unfazed by the quasi-metaphysical nature of the question ‘how should heaven be lit?’
The illumination itself is an accumulation of the desired lighting effects, attempting to accommodate all their separate descriptions into one environment. As a result it becomes a very peculiar space; an assembly of different visions; golden, bloody, icey blue and bounded by darkness. Its manifestation cuts out the image-intensifier camera filming the crew and its termination, through switching off the lights, returns us to the original sequence of the crew waiting to prepare the illumination. The disappearance of one space allows the visibility of another. Darkness appears to be a permanent (and ‘natural’?) state which is alleviated only temporarily by imagination’s multiplicity.

VoIce over for 'Nightvision'

A way that I see heaven being lit is as if with one of the old Brute lamps, which is an arc lamp which casts a ...light which is like sunlight and it could be a way of recreating that, sort of, golden sunlight that you get sometimes in summer, early evening where the sun is quite low, but it's very big, and I think that that is an idyllic kind of light really, nothing can beat that kind of light ...so you would see moving light in the distance ...and the rest of the wood would be lit up by starlight and that would be very pale phosphorescent,..white landing on the leaves but then also going into deep shadows, deep, sort of blue shadows and darkness in the under-exposed parts. And of course you'd have the moon...with an HMI or something. Up very high striking down through all the foliage and casting lots of shadows; moving shadows, ( the breeze would be making all the leaves rustle around ). I would use Kino flows in the wood at night suspended above the trees and that would mean that you would see the effect of starlight...
Vanessa Woolf.

I would light heaven with fire,...heaven should be about warmth and intimacy,..comfort,.. yellow to red, gentle glow,...horizon spreads...expands and warms up. I would move away from using any bright white light... Shadows cast by white light are violent, especially stationary white light...
Greg Woods

I would light heaven with the biggest source of lighting I could find, perhaps a straw colour, a warm translucent light through the trees , a light mist, lots of greenery, but graduated colour being swept in from the front from indigo right up to your warm colours. I 'd put a 20 or 10K behind a huge frame with graduated gels, just strips of gels across, creating all your graduated colours and they'll bleed into each other and they'll create a rainbowy effect. To stave off the darkness you'd have to blast it with a lot of light . You'd have to put a lot of light source in there, but then you would lose the night. I could turn a forest into day but I'd have to pump a lot of light in there. And you'd think it was daylight and then you are creating your heaven. But to shoot at night I'd put a light mist in because when you've got the mist it hides a lot of the dark.
Dave de Haan

I would light heaven with loads of tinkling blue lights...it would be pretty strong light, maybe flashes of light that could maybe vanish and appear and vanish and appear. Uhmmmm...basically the blue tinkling lights would be like in the leaves; would be like the energy flowing through the leaves,..the light though would be stronger in the back, though, than the front and going through the different branches and leaves... and, uhmmm very electric light blue, very, very blue electric light, maybe going on and off as well. But basically I would not see just one main lighting it would just be varying a lot, but pretty hard light lots of contrast, lots of shadows as the light vanishes and maybe as it is extinguished the shadows get longer as the light fades away...I can't picture anything smooth or soft at all...It's just my vision,..I just picture it being really disturbing...I don't know... Roya Zarga If you are trying to light heaven you would have to utilise what is already there...using filtering , diffusing, reflecting, creating shadows, in order to move the light, transform the light, bounce the light around, protect areas from light. In a space like that with trees and bushes, in trying to light heaven, I would want to see shadows cast from objects that were preventing light entering the space...I would be looking at ways of enhancing, exaggerating some of the textures that are already in there; the leaves, the bark, the forest floor, a softer, darker orange or possibly green, filling in the shadows from the ... key light and then adding in some textures into that as well..
Dick Straker

Light in heaven would be over all a warm glow of sunlight but in all areas there would be additional lighting in the form of patterns,...as well as these there would be great shafts of light coming from all directions; some of solid colour and some mixed changing colours. ...Create the effect of there being no ground by extending the light that goes onto the trees straight down then by using it as a projection surface it would feel like no up and no down,... and would be a sort of 'floating in space' sort of feel.
Chris Ogden

Heaven should be...something variable...endlessly fascinating,..can transform itself in terms of colour,..infinite blue but needs warm,..pinks and ambers, even a rich orange, shifting gently from one colour to another,..unearthly blue like an HMI,..should be soft but a source emenating from one light,..cover a wide area...The light would penetrate as far as the eye could see in the forest,..looking back on it, it would be perceived as one source,...and it would be moving, that's the whole point......you can't have light without darkness,...
Mark French


'Nightvision': previous showings:

Solo shows:
1999 Ikon gallery in Birmingham,
2004 Carlier Gebauer, Berlin
+ in the following group shows:
2000 'Dreammachines' (curated by Susan Hiller), Dundee Centre for Contemporary Art, touring to Mappin Gallery, Sheffield, Camden Art Centre, London, Glyn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea.*
'Somewhere Near Vada', Project Art Centre, Dublin.*
'Artifice,' Deste Foundation, Athens.*
'Places in Mind' (with Stan Douglas and Elizabeth Macgill ), Belfast., Ormeau Baths Gallery,
2001 'Bright Paradise', 1st Auckland Triennial, Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand.*
2001 'Night on Earth', Städtische Ausstellungshalle Am Hawerkamp, Münster*
2002 'Life is Beautiful', Laing Art Gallery , Newcastle upon Tyne., UK.
2005 “Documentary Creations,” Kunstmuseum Luzern.** = accompanying publication