Light Graphs in the Andes

[Image: From "Imprints on the Andes" by Studio Orta].

While writing a post earlier this week about an exhibition in Paris, called Uninhabitable? Art of Extreme Environments, I stumbled upon this project by Lucy and Jorge Orta, aka Studio Orta.

Performed fourteen years ago, "Imprints on the Andes" used "PAE light cannons," which "enable[d] gigantic mobile images to be projected up to 1km in distance." The artists thus projected massive hieroglyphic shapes onto the ruins of Macchu Picchu and on the mountainsides beyond.

In fact, the cannons are strong enough to be seen in broad daylight.

[Image: From "Imprints on the Andes" by Studio Orta].

The effect is quite amazing, especially if one were to encounter these things without foreknowledge of what they were or that they'd be there.

You hike over a remote rise in the mountainous deserts of Utah – and there, ahead, moving ever so slightly, is a strange shape, like an enemy ship from Space Invaders, a shining path of alien signs hovering on the geologies all around you.

[Images: From "Imprints on the Andes" by Studio Orta].

Unfortunately, the effect is not quite as exciting when used on buildings.