Slots | 2010

Collaboration with Architect Tanu Sankalia, San Francisco, CA

In February 2010, a series of slots located on a Victorian block constructed in the late 1880’s on Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco’s North Panhandle (NOPA) district were illuminated at night using dual mounted stage floodlights. The light installation proposed to shift the gaze of the observer from the normative, decorated façade of the Victorians, to the interstices by their side. By day, the slots, although intended to capture light, are relatively dark and in sharp contrast to the iridescent façades bathed in sunlight. By night, as the slots are washed in chromatic light, our normative perception of seeing a figure against ground, solid against void, and light against shadow is inverted, producing a perceptual reversal. Through light, the spaces are conveyed into an active public consciousness, recalling the hidden and sometimes lost spaces of the city.