Archive feature, first published 2018-12-20.
Three figures share a bench, their faces illuminated by the phones in their hands. They are close enough to speak, yet their attention appears to be elsewhere. Absorbed by Light turns that recognizable arrangement into a public artwork. Presented as part of the Amsterdam Light Festival, the project grew from designer Gali May Lucas’s work with Design Bridge, with sculptor Karoline Hinz bringing the figures into three dimensions.
The collaboration mattered because Lucas’s background was in graphic design. Working with Berlin-based Karoline Hinz gave the idea a physical presence that an illustration could only suggest. The figures could occupy a real bench, leaving space for a living visitor. The piece was shipped to Amsterdam and assembled for the installation described in this 2018 feature; its historical presentation should not be mistaken for a current exhibition listing.
The festival’s description credits Lucas with the design and Hinz with its execution. It also makes the invitation explicit: visitors can sit among the figures. That shared seat changes the relationship between the public and the work. Someone who first approaches as a spectator can become another person in the arrangement, physically close to neighbors who remain absorbed in their screens.
Design Bridge: Website | Facebook | Instagram
A place for the visitor on the bench
The screen light gives the installation its title and its visual focus. A lowered head and hands held around a phone are enough to make the activity recognizable, even without readable messages. The sculpted figures seem available to the surrounding space and unavailable to one another at the same time. The bench holds them together, while their poses suggest three separate lines of attention.
Photographing a sculpture about screens
A visitor taking a photograph beside the work adds a small complication. The camera may be the reason for pausing to engage with the sculpture, yet making the picture can also repeat the screen-directed posture it depicts. That does not make the visitor’s response invalid. It gives the work another scene to include, allowing participation and self-recognition to overlap rather than requiring a single correct reaction.
Links from the 2018 feature: Amsterdam Light Festival · Design Bridge · Karoline Hinz · Facebook · Instagram
Related reading: Sculptures That Turn Public Spaces Into Places to Pause.
Light, attention and physical presence
The empty places on the bench make the public encounter part of the composition, alongside the sculpted figures.
In the setting of the Amsterdam Light Festival, light is both a medium and a subject. Here it does not only make an object easier to see; it appears to draw the figures away from what is immediately around them. The project’s connection with Design Bridge also helps explain the economy of the idea. A familiar gesture becomes legible quickly, while the invitation to sit introduces a slower, more personal encounter with it.
The contribution of Karoline Hinz gives that gesture weight and position. A drawn figure can suggest someone looking down, but a sculpted person can share a seat with a visitor and occupy their field of view. The difference makes the distance between physical proximity and attention something a person can experience spatially. It is no longer only an observation about people elsewhere; the visitor has a place within the arrangement.
The work supports a discussion of phone habits without documenting what any real person is reading or why. A device can connect someone to people far away even as it draws attention from those nearby. Absorbed by Light makes that tension visible through a simple shared setting. Its strongest question is contained in the bench itself: what does it mean to be together when each person’s attention has somewhere else to go?
Additional source: Amsterdam Light Festival: Absorbed by Light.
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