There’s a story that when Sir Isaac Newton dissected the phenomenon of the rainbow, the poet John Keats commented that "science had robbed nature and the rainbow of its spectacle by reducing its notion to prismatic colours”.
Troika’s Falling Light installation, commissioned by Swarvoski Crystal Palace for Design Miami 2010 recently, challenges the belief of both the poet and the scientist.
Falling Light presented a captivating cinematographic interplay between crystal prisms and the experience they are able to create. The installation comprised 50 mechanical devices suspended from the ceiling, with each one incorporating a custom-cut Swarovski crystal optical lens, a computer programmed motor and a white LED.
The light then emanates from a mechanised arm-like structure that projects light from all angles through the custom-cut crystal lens. The lens, which acts as a type of prism, reflects and transforms the white light of the LEDs that then “baths” visitors in a shower of light drops. The drops, in turn, resemble a rainbow of colours.
