At last Tuesday’s (15th March) ‘Hidden’ project in the Broomhill Art Flat, the young people returned to their light painting skills to work with a new technique. Facilitator Louie had brought in a light stick – which unlike the light pens, used simply to draw outlines and simple images – can be used to create complete images. Although we don’t understand all the ins-and-outs, we figured out how to use the new tool…

An example of one of Louie’s own images made using the light stick. You can faintly see the light stick being moved just above the URTV logo.

The stick is pre-programmed with an image, a bee for example. As the user walks along with the stick vertical, the pixels change, meaning that the image is almost ‘washed’ on to the ‘canvas’ (or the air). When used with a long-exposure setting on the camera, the whole image is picked up and made complete.

The stick is pre-programmed with an image, a bee for example. As the user walks along with the stick vertical, the pixels change, meaning that the image is almost ‘washed’ on to the ‘canvas’ (or the air). When used with a long-exposure setting on the camera, the whole image is picked up and made complete. 

We mixed this technique with one we had used previously, light writing, where torches are covered with coloured acetate and pictures are ‘drawn’ on the air. Putting the two techniques together produced some interesting results. The light from the torch seemed to be stronger than that from the light stick which meant that doodles seemed to shine through the ‘washed on’ image.

When the light stick was used behind the model with the light torch, then a great sense of depth was produced and some of the images looked extremely dramatic with our models standing in front of burning suns, flames and the solar system.

To see these images in their full glory, come along to our ‘Bye to the Bells’ event on 1^st April from 6-9pm at Drumfrochar Square where the images will be displayed across the front of the flats using video-mapping image projection.