The world's population is expected to reach 7 billion next year. Each of us uses 2.8 gallons of oil a day. And the amount of water one person sends down the drain during a lifetime of brushing teeth could fill an Olympic-size swimming pool.
Norman Coates, who teaches lighting design at UNC School of the Arts, looked at these and other statistics and said, "Wow, that's something, but what does it mean?"
His students have come up with some answers.
Beginning Thursday, they will pepper the Fourth Street side of the Pepper Building with projected images during the next offering of the Winston-Salem Light Project, a highlight of Six Days in November. Up to 100 images will appear during each of several 15- to 20-minute cycles, with cycles to run continuously from 7 to 11 p.m. daily through Saturday.
Pedestrians will see everything from a cow suspended by a methane-filled balloon to a water bubble being sucked through a faucet and leaving a desert behind. In addition, numbers will light up windows on the Fourth and Liberty streets sides of the Pepper Building to illustrate counting to 7 billion. Students will hand out explanatory literature to anyone who asks for it.
"We got intrigued by numbers," Coates said. "We started trying to find ways to take those statistics and put them into images, so that anybody who was watching would be intrigued by the image and then get an idea of what the statistic actually means."
The images will emanate from projectors the school is renting, at a considerable discount, from Scharff Weisberg, Inc., a Long Island City-based firm with ties to UNCSA. They amount to what Coates described as "public-art street theater" in response to such issues as global warming and the depletion of natural resources.
In addition, students are getting hands-on experience working with projections.
"You go to shows now, and projection is in every show," Coates said. "There's this whole educational tool that's happening here. We're trying to take ideas and convert them into images -- which is what we do in theater."
Alex Bright is one of four college seniors contributing images to the latest edition of the light project, which began last year with a light show on the façade of the Millennium Center downtown. Like the other students in this year's show, Bright has been asked to illustrate a different idea, and he has turned to a visual artist for inspiration.
Bright is exploring the effects of human overpopulation on plant and animal life. The visual artist inspiring him is Banksy, of Great Britain, whose graffiti uses stencils and aerosol paint "to produce street art that blurs the lines of reality and illusion," Bright wrote in a light-project brochure.
One of the images that Bright created is of a cow hanging from a big red balloon filled with methane, which cows "emit … as a byproduct" of processing grass.
"We have 1.4 billion cows in the world," Bright said. "And each one emits 300 liters of methane every day. Methane is greenhouse gas. It traps 23 times more heat than (carbon dioxide) does in the atmosphere."
Viewers looking for solutions to these and other problems won't find them in the images, said Coates, who stressed that the goal is help people "see (an) issue and … define it better in their minds."
At the same time, student Rob Ross, whose images will illustrate what might happen if we had to carry around oil all day, is hoping for some beneficial effects.
He wrote in a project brochure: "I hope that viewers leave the project remembering our images … and perhaps change some of their everyday tasks as a result."
kkeuffel@wsjournal.com | 727-7337
Under the direction of Norman Coates, lighting students from UNC School of the Arts will project images on the Pepper Building Thursday through Saturday. Up to 100 images will be projected during 15- to 20-minute cycles, with cycles to run from 7 to 11 p.m. daily. The Pepper Building is at the corner of Trade and Fourth streets. Call 770-3399.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement