Rendering №4

The editorial published on February, 4 is headlined “Solar Flair: An Artistic Lamp, Powered by the Sun.” It carries a lot of comment on Olafur Eliasson and Frederik Ottesen create an object that provides light in places off the electrical grid.

There is every likelihood that Stealing what’s ours to give to the poor, who also own it, seems to be part of the concept behind Olafur Eliasson and Frederik Ottesen’s light-emitting device Little Sun.  Analyzing the situation, it’s necessary to point out that the material in question is sunlight. But what to do with it, how to use it, and where to put it is the real gift.  Speaking of the situation, we may note that eliasson (the Danish-Icelandic artist who, in 2003, made a very big sun sculpture for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in London) introduced the portable solar-powered LED lamp at the Venice Architecture Biennale last year. Little Sun sells for $25 at museum shops and online

Besides, there is every reason to believe that Proceeds from those purchases enable the lights to be sold for much less in impoverished areas. Across the globe today, some 1.6 billion people have scant access to electricity, and the designers hope to make the lamp available to 50 million of them within ten years. In this connection it is worth while mentioning that The art of it all derives from the international group of filmmakers and artists whom Eliasson and Ottesen asked to demonstrate uses for the gadget.  The reporter also gives some details to the fact that eighteen artists from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and South America were invited to “collaborate” on 16 short films, available online, about life, light, energy, and Little Sun, Eliasson writes in a blog post for Tate Modern, where a Little Sun exhibition was held last year. In resolute terns the author if the article makes it clear that film director Dominga Sotomayor, from Chile, put the lamp through many tricks in her contribution, People, which is at once an installation, a poem, and a mini-movie. Little Sun is reflected in a mirror in a garden, illuminates a toilet posed nobly on a hillside, and sits like an eye on a window frame.

As the evidence of usage of this creation the correspondent writes that you can stick it on a wall, put it on your breasts, illuminate your vehicles, or plant it in trees, as Hawa Essuman of Kenya does in his video. Or you can use it to perform as a hybrid creature (part man, part animal, part sun-bearer) prowling and dancing in woods and city streets and dank tunnels, joints all aglow.

The reporter concludes the article with the following quotation by Elisson, “This question of energy access is not just about climate issues, green economy, and so on; it is also a more fundamental question: do we understand that all humans have the same basic desires and needs? We all want to be happy, and we are also fundamentally social beings.

As for me, I like such unusual and creative solution to such serious problem. I think that probably it is not very useful and profitable way to solute it and it is considered as a funny useless stuff by the majority of people, but it really makes pleasant atmosphere and has very interesting design and as a result it has at least one advantage.