Scattered Light

@ National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia

Scattered Light visualizes reflections of museum visitors on the concept of ‘freedom’. It uses a selection of videos taken from the museum’s ‘It’s Your Story’ recording booths video database, where visitors are recorded sharing their associations on ‘freedom’.



A machine rides along a 9 meter rail, printing selected sentences and frames from the video collection. The printed faces and texts fade away as time passes, pointing to temporariness and fragility.

The machine writes on a large wall painted with an ultra-violate sensitive pigment. While passing over the surface, it turns on and off 96 UV LEDs in a carefully timed sequence, exposing the surface to UV and temporarily creating dots and dashes on the surface. Those are added into texts and images. Once a visual is printed, the machine turns and prints a new one on it fading memory.

Scattered Light was commissioned by National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia (January 2015)
Curator Dr. Josh Perelman