Les Danseuses

Artist: Artemide Australia

Les Danseuses is a suspension lamp that draws inspiration from dancing: it diffuses coloured light through shaped fabrics that move gently, in harmony, against the resistance of air.

The ‘lamp’ is a luminous adornment to the cantilevered corner window on the sandstone façade of the Museum of Sydney. It is constructed as a hybrid product combining light, air and an engine mounted on a suspension shaft to move and raise the fabric. The light source is a rotating optical unit that sits alongside the engine and produces diffused, coloured light. The combined unit works together to produce gentle dynamic light projections at very low power consumption.

The artists studied the physics of centripetal force (directed towards the centre of an axis of rotation) and its opposite, centrifugal force (drawing away from the centre of rotation), to design textile discs as gently twirling forms that add motion the installation.

The fabrics were cut very precisely, using three different laser programs; so the resulting beauty created by the flights of fabric owes more to physics than to aesthetics.

The installation represents a precise balance between speed—the energy used for rotation—and stability, provided by the number, size, position and shape of the moving fabrics. The fabric itself was selected for its light-diffusing properties and is in two colours, with a lighter tone used on the inside of the lamp to better reflect the light.

Les Danseuses is a project that involves air and light, emotion and surprise, energy and environmental quality: it delivers a poetic outcome, supported by the principles of physics.

Countries represented by installation: Australia, Italy and Switzerland