In the early 60’s the first experiment with mobile elements were made with light boxes; they were kind of diaphragms modifying the forms letting through more or less light. Those boxes helped me resolve the problem that preoccupied me: the diversity of situations, in one experience, the notion of movement, the instability and the probability, the outside contingences of the work and the will to move away from the notion of a stable and definitive work.
Some experiments at the time, with small size, already used some basic elements, which would set up technically, modified and enlarged in the future.
Let’s describe one of these experiments:
On a white screen (60cmx60cm) is placed another white surface of same dimension and 5cm away. This latest surface is evenly cut in little parallel squares of 5cmx5cm. While preserving their position; the squares are suspended by a very thin nylon string on the front, so they can have all kind of positions while turning independently. Therefore they positions are at random and their movement is slow or fast according to the surrounding air and the lighting is also modified by the light angles.
In a similar experiment, the background is black instead of white, the square position is alternated, starting from 2 opposite directions, one with all the squares perpendicular to the background (in black) and the other one with the square parallel to the background and covering it (in white).This established with the movement of each square an average of 50%of white and 50% of black. Another experiment conducted at the same period was to replace the opaque squares with some in Plexiglas on a white screen. The vanishing visual of the basic elements gave the obvious importance of the outside elements: the moving air, the surrounding pictures which were slatted and caught by each moving square while the moving light was reflected on a white screen by the squares.
This led me logically to experiment on the different places of the moving light in a dark room and I realized the diversity of combinations. In a similar way the background were changed, curved and given different shapes. The reflections were accelerated or slowed down. Finally the courses of the reflections were modified as the angles of the suspended elements are modified as well. Those experiments ended up with a visual situation always different but very similar.
