Device for Summoning Rainbows
By Caitlind r.c. Brown
Every colour we see—everything we see—is just a small band of visible light in a larger collection of wavelengths radiating cosmic rays, gamma rays, X-rays, microwaves, radar, and radio waves across our planet. We use the visible spectrum to gauge our relationship with the external world, from micro to macro, measuring everything from the distance of neighbouring celestial bodies to the cancer cells in outer layers of our skin. The rainbow itself is a natural phenomenon still widely regarded as (for lack of a better word) magical, representative of that which is ever-present but unseen, catalyzed into visibility by atmospheric refraction. Rainbows straddle the space between earth and sky, terrestrial and cosmic, physical and spiritual, known and unknown. As with many artists working with the medium of light, we’ve long been fascinated by rainbows as a rare and natural phenomenon, arching beyond the reaches of paint or photograph. Our quest to summon rainbows began in experiments with analog optics and grew into an exploration of light, deconstructed into colours and re-examined. But even as we conjure rainbows with complicated configurations of prisms, lenses, and lightbulbs, the rainbow itself maintains an otherworldly allure—never captured, only summoned.
Artists have been painting, photographing, and attempting to capture rainbows in one medium or another for centuries. Romantic landscape painters like J. M. W. Turner painted rainbows alongside other weathers, perhaps in an effort to preserve the fleeting meteorological occurrence. Contemporary artist Olafur Eliasson conjured rainbows with his seminal work Beauty, using light and a fine mist of water to make a floating rainbow in the gallery. As with rainbows in the sky above, Eliasson’s spectrum shifted depending on the perspective of the viewer as they walked around the misty scene, prompting the question, “Who has the responsibility for seeing what we see?” [1]
Image 1 | Prism tests. Photograph by Caitlind Brown
Image 2 | Early rainbow experiments. Photograph by Caitlind Brown
In mythology, rainbows often materialize as beauty after malevolence: in the story of Noah’s ark, a rainbow appears in the sky as the violent waters of the Great Flood recede, a covenant that God will never again destroy all the living creatures of the earth. For Aboriginal peoples throughout Australia, rainbows are associated with the Rainbow Serpent: powerful enough to rend the landscape or bestow magic, as powerful and ambivalent as a natural disaster [2]. In contemporary western culture, the rainbow flag has become a powerful symbol of inclusivity, diversity, and LGBTQ2+ rights. Artist-activists internationally have taken to building sculptural rainbows for Pride events, sometimes with radical consequences: in Poland, a rainbow sculpture was vandalized so frequently, the artwork was reconceptualised as Unbreakable, a water projection arching over public space that had no physical presence to destroy [3] Summoning rainbows is, perhaps, the pursuit of materializing the immaterial, of capturing the unseen and revealing it—if only for a short time.
Using light as sculptural material, Device for Summoning Rainbows is an analog projection machine refracting white light into the wavelengths of the visible spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green (the most difficult to capture), blue, indigo, violet. A moving drum of prisms slice full spectrum light into rainbow waves, projecting in concentric rings across the space below. The machine is a prototype for a larger public artwork called LIGHT KEEPER, commissioned by Waterfront Toronto for Aitken Place Park, which straddles the boundary between the dense urbanity of downtown Toronto and the open waters of Lake Ontario. Viewers are invited to interact with spectral waves as they wash across the park, chasing rainbows or basking in their glow.
Drawing from lighthouse lenses and analog projection technologies, the piece speaks to light as a medium for sending messages across vast dark spaces, signalling danger or change ahead. At sea, different coloured lighthouse flashes indicated specific places to passing ships. The length and number of flashes were wayfinding devices, serving the dual purpose of warding vessels away from rocky shores and indicating their location on the map. Unlike the mythical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, in our imaginary scenario, a rainbow flash pattern indicates a less pragmatic place, hearkening to whimsy, imagination, and phenomenology, while warding off the conventional lights of city spaces.
Image 3 | Testing an early prototype for Device for Summoning Rainbows. Photograph by Caitlind Brown
Image 4 | Marking the drawings. Photograph by Caitlind Brown
Image 5 | A prototype for a prototype, pre-device. Photograph by Caitlind Brown
For our team of collaborators—myself, fellow artist Wayne Garrett, and the interdisciplinary design team at Studio North—the rainbow is a manifestation of natural light, deconstructed, the opposite of digital projection and commercial light displays that offer little more than surface sans depth. In civic space, where the night is often lost to sky glow and artificial light, spectral light draws a connection with the natural environment neglected by overexposure to the razzle dazzle of urban lighting. Especially when considering the global trend of projection-mapping and LED signage, the natural beauty of everyday optics is being swept away by ultra-bright spectacles of moving images and sound.
Device for Summoning Rainbows empowers the visible spectrum to intervene in civic space, speaking to the complex interspaces between natural and manmade, wayfinding and placemaking, environmental and urban.
Light creates a space, a mood, a feeling that is itself temporary and traceless. The simultaneously present and absent quality of light allows the medium great power to mark places, communicate changing messages, and transform spaces from day to night. The mysticism of rainbows lies in their temporality, their ability to appear after the rain for just a fleeting moment before melting back into the clouds. Device for Summoning Rainbows prolongs this magical presence, for just a little while, becoming a machine to conjure and keep the ephemeral light that cities threaten to overwhelm.
Image 6 | Device for Summoning Rainbows installed at Glow Festival in Calgary, February 2019. Photograph by Caitlind Brown
Image 7 | Watching rainbows—the author observing the device. Photograph by Wayne Garrett
Notes
1. Olafur Eliasson, “On Beauty – with Olafur Eliasson,” April 28, 2008, PS 1, Museum of Modern Art, New York, YouTube video, 1:27, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy87T7oNZts.
2. A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, “The Rainbow Serpent Myth in South-East Australia,” Oceania 1 (Jan 1, 1930): 349.
3. Matthew Day, “’Unbreakable’ LGBT Rainbow Installation Unveiled in Warsaw After Far-Right Attacks,” Telegraph, June 9, 2018, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/09/unbreakable-lgbt-rainbowinstallation-unveiled-warsaw-far-right/
Bio
Caitlind r.c. Brown is a Calgary-based artist, DIY curator, and collaborator working with materials ranging from artificial light to re-appropriated architectural debris, often resulting in radically inclusive public art projects. Device for Summoning Rainbows is a prototype for LIGHT KEEPER, a public artwork designed in a collaboration between Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett, and Studio North. LIGHT KEEPER was commissioned by Waterfront Toronto for Aitken Place Park and opened in 2019.
