Meet the artist creating real life holograms

Hi Jordan, tell us about the cool way that you use light in your art?

I try to remix RBG channels in the real world and make light a solid thing. Light is a really interesting material – it’s a bit like a stream of data, and our perception is a set of sensors. If you understand how both are programmed, you can “hack” light and vision, creating new kinds of experiences, new kinds of objects.

What can we expect from your new installation Sectum Spectra?

Sectum Spectra is like stepping inside of a hologram. I’ve been given this big glass cube in Clerkenwell London which I’m wrapping in an optical skin. It splits any light source into these cascading spectra of colour. Think hypercubes, tesseracts, or a transparent Rubiks Cube that explodes with rainbows. From the inside, it refracts whatever’s around it into about 9 different silhouettes. It’s probably best to see it in person to be honest. Come check it out.

How do you hope people will respond to and experience it?

I had a show of some of my large mirrors in Toronto last summer, and some kids flipped out over them. Totally deadpan, one says to the other “this is how aliens see us.” Biggest compliment ever. I wish I’d found out that kid’s twitter.

Art used to be used as evidence of the divine – something so beautiful or so ambitious – the aggregate work of thousands of hours – proved the existence of a god or gods, or the far-reaching influence of the church.

Art can be about technique, research, narrative, pleasure, or used as a tool for education, but it was also used to reinforce the power of religion. In my own small way, I want to do the same for science, for physics – look at the amazing things we can produce with a little research. Hopefully the work can bring a little wonder into someone’s day, or inspire curiosity about the world around us, about what we’re not seeing.

Why are mirrors such a particular source of fascination for you?

Mirrors collapse space, contain it, copy and paste it. They’re interactive and will change completely depending on their context. Mirrors have an interesting place in art history – Jan Van Eyck painted convex mirrors in his canvases, which included reflections of himself as he was painting. That was pretty meta.

Incidents of Mirror Travel in the Yucatan in 1969, by Robert Smithson, placed mirrors through the desert, reflecting the sky. In an accompanying essay, he said that in moments where the ground meets the sky everything ceases to exist. It fucked me up a little bit, and made me see the potential in the mirror as a portal, a gateway, something that can distort reality and perception of space.

In these times of digital overload, is it particularly important to you as an artist to create tangible experiences?

I’m really interested in the idea of a haptic response – which is the sense that that the thing you’re looking at is real, something you could touch, as opposed to a digital artifact.

I’m fascinated by the Uncanny Valley – it’s basically a dip in our emotional response to things that we perceive to be too real but not real enough. It’s this inversion you feel when you see a CGI human face, or realize a hyperreal painting isn’t a photograph. I think this moment is a fascinating one – it tweaks your world view, gives you a visceral sense of wtf, calls into question the things that you’ve seen. We have this primal, programmed response to things that subvert our expectations – it wakes you up a little. Physical stuff does this.

Your work translates very well to the online space - how much does the digital world influence you?

I see a lot of digital work – rare pedigrees of architecture in RPGs, particle effects of explosions in space, impossible joints and inflations – they’re fascinating, and require a lot of skill to create, but it’s all artifice. They defy physics but in a cursory way because you can set the rules in a digital universe.

These works are interesting but they’re untouchable, and ultimately flattened onto a screen – a bit like looking through a stained glass into possible worlds. Even VR is a little disappointing, at this point. I want to embrace the set of rules we have in reality and see ways that I can bend them, work around them. I look at this mind-bending digital work and ask – how can I make this stuff real?

You previously trained as a blacksmith, are you able to make use of these skills in your art today?

Constantly. My maestro in Chile was a student of Anthony Caro – I was taught in my apprenticeship that the beauty of objects lie in their moments of transition – how to get from a plane to a curve, from a solid to a hollow. This became a little more abstract when I started thinking about how an object transitions into space, and then to our perception, so I come from that sculptural tradition.

I use steel in nearly all of my pieces. It’s an incredibly plastic material, it can be shaped into nearly anything. It’s a shadow, it’s a neutral, it’s a touch of black – it provides a sober counterpoint to all of my work in colour. All iron in the universe was forged in the bellies of exploding stars, which is pretty badass. Also, I love the process of working in steel. Secretly, under all the safety gear, it’s actually quite simple, and gentle, and done in small gestures.

Where do you go when you’re in need of inspiration?

Astrophysics, magic realist fiction, evil wizards in RPGs, science sub-reddits. My process is very experimental and material based, so I go to weird trade shows all the time – most recently for lasers and holography, new construction materials, and health and safety equipment – which, as it turns out, is an amazing resource for optical and light-active fabrics. The marketing teams don’t usually know what to make of me because I get super excited about UV active, glow in the dark spandex and start shooting lasers at them.

Which emerging artists should we be looking out for?

Right now I’m a little obsessed with the colour work of Liz West (@lizweststudio) and Rachel Harding (@rachel_harding_london). Alice Dunseath (@alicedunseathfilms) is an animator who not only creates incredible, science-based stuff but adds these subtle emotional narratives to the work. She’s a big inspiration.

I lived in Chile for many years and I’ve gotten to know some incredible artists – Xaviera Lopez (@xavieralopez) is basically Frida Kahlo reincarnated for the digital age. Adrian Goet (@adriangouet) from Chile paints explosions with a sense of peace. Victor Espinoza (@victor__espinoza_) turns found photos from the 80s into impressionist embroideries.

Thanks Jordan!

Sectum Spectra runs from 23-25 May as part of Clerkenwell London’s Design Undefined exhibition for  Clerkenwell Design Week.

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