Looking Up at the Surface (2023)

Installation at Contemporary Calgary

Polarized film, plastics, metal, wood

Looking Up at the Surface inspires curiosity in the viewer through interaction and experimentation with the mesmerizing quantum optical phenomena of polarized light. The viewer stands inside a floor-to-ceiling wall of windows facing North with a high vantage over a section of the Bow River. Impinging sunlight is filtered by the glass windowpanes followed by layers of polarizing and birefringent materials held within a frame structure fitted inside the windowsills. I encourage the viewer to take ownership of their experience by providing an interactive element to the work. To reveal the magic of polarization, the viewer observes the window installation through a “quantum looking glass,” which can be used to explore the piece by moving freely around the space.

When viewed without the looking glass, Looking Up at the Surface is a mostly nondescript landscape of semi-transparent plastic. When viewed through the looking glass, all the hidden beauty and mysteries of light are realized. This is comparable to the way polarizers and other experimental setups (like the double-slit) have revealed mysteries of the quantum world to us. The use of the quantum looking glasses also mimic the act of a quantum measurement collapsing the wavefunction, in which the infinite is projected into a discernible state just by observation. In these ways, polarizer is both literally and figuratively a window into another world.

Photo credit: Mitra Samavaki (2023)