emily conrad

Happy New Year! As much as I enjoyed 2009, toward the end it began looking like we needed a little bit more love around us. Since it wasn’t known for sure if this need for love was something only I felt or a cultural phenomenon, it only seemed right to track the frequency in which the term “love” is used.  The Love Lights offer an ambient snapshot of how much love is passing through a few corners of the world at any given second. When love is expressed in one five different languages; swedish (kärlek), english (love), indonesian (mencintai), greek (αγάπη), and norwegian (elsker), a light will pulse on. The Love Lights are built off sentiments publicly divulged through Twitter, which has nearly 50 million users worldwide. I’ve been noticing that the lights for the non-english words stagger on as the day goes by, and are most active late at night. English, of course being the dominating language of Twitter, remains fairly consistent.

The Love Lights are made from LEDs, copper tubing, handblown glass bulbs, beeswax, and electronic components. Each bulb is etched with the word kärlek, love, mencintai, αγάπη, or elsker and then dipped in beeswax to give the light a natural quality. 15 x 9 x 21 inches. The only requirements to get the lights up and running are an ethernet (cable) connection and a power source.

The Love Lights are one of four light pieces I’ve created over the past year. Each one is made from similar materials with a different concept, such as the Belief Loop and War Lights. As an artist, it’s important to me that traditional electronic components are not the dictating aesthetic. Electrical parts like LEDs, wire, and pcb board are just a few of the tools needed to create these pieces. What is more important is how they reflect the human sentiments that go into making them work.

Contact me if you have any questions or are just curious about how it works. Many thanks to Jeff Gray for technical support.