L:100, A:0, B:0
Five Studies on Light
by Boris Acket
and Studio Airport
Light is in everything we see, yet its nature is elusive. As a wave of light interacts with the world, it scatters, diffuses, becomes absorbed, and transforms. And what appears as white light is, in fact, composed of seven distinct colors—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.
It is light, in its many permutations, that gives form to the cycle of Earth’s seasons. As our planet tilts and orbits around the Sun, the shifting angles of light create rhythms that shape temperature and weather, and beyond that, entire ecosystems, human cultures, and our deepest sense of time and place.
Variation—and its absence—is central to our experience of these rhythms. The changing light of the seasons is more than a visual phenomenon; it is a cosmic metronome. Without these fluctuations, time would feel adrift, and the intricate ecological, emotional, spiritual systems built on light would begin to unravel.
As light changes throughout the seasons, we encounter how the nature of light determines what we see—for it is only through the instruction of light that we can perceive the world. We experience how light bounces, bends, diffuses, and disperses; how it creates shadow and saturates color; how the quality of light at dawn differs from that at dusk; how the absence or presence of light alters the human experience at its most fundamental level.
These studies on light explore not only the elements of light at play throughout the seasons, but also the very nature of light itself. They are invitations to meet each of light’s faces; to move with it as it evolves.
Credits
Film & Installation
Film
Production
Emergence Magazine
Studio Airport
Creative Directors
Bram Broerse
Maurits Wouters
Visual Artist
Boris Acket
Executive Producer
Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
Producer
Bram Broerse
Art Director
Maurits Wouters
Script adapted from “Making Light: An Invitation,”
by Kerri ní Dochartaigh
Director of Photography
Luuk de Kok
Music & Sound Design
Julian Tjon Sack Kie
Cellist
Laurence Gaudreau
Voice Artist
Vittoria Totale
Graphic Design
Studio Airport
Editor
Bram Broerse
Colorist
Luuk de Kok
Development
September Digital
Creative Developer
Hidde Meulenbeek
Photography
Carsten Pölking
Johanna Gschwandtl
Maurits Wouters
Camera Assistant
Mischa van Schajik
Dolly Operator
Wouter Visser
Rigger
Jonathan Jansen
Visagist
Allison Stomp
Painter
Arno van Lieshout
Metal Production
Bart Appels
Location
Studio 3000 Amsterdam
Installations
(1)
DIFFUSION & SCATTERING
Creative Direction, Software
Boris Acket
Creative Engineering
Merijn Versnel
Creative Direction
Joep Beving
(2)
DIFFRACTION
Artwork by
Boris Acket & Sabine Marcelis
Creative Engineering
Merijn Versnel
(3)
Transparency & Translucency
Creative Direction, Software
Boris Acket
Software
Moos Crebolder
(4)
Reflection & Refraction
Motion Photography from “Monsoon”
Bear Guerra
Creative Direction
Studio Airport
(5)
Hue Spectrum
Creative Direction
Studio Airport
Projector Technology
Rob Acket
Studio Boris Acket
Creative Direction
Boris Acket
Creative Production
Luiza Guidi
Production Assistance
Moos Crebolder
Anna Møller
Andrea Bolderup
Studio Airport
Creative Direction
Bram Broerse
Maurits Wouters
Team
Anze Petelinšek
Carsten Pölking
Johanna Gschwandtl
Vol. 6: Seasons
Print edition
Explore an adaptation of this feature in our latest print edition, Seasons. Order your copy at our online store:
Like light passing through a prism to reveal its many colors, the myriad expressions of the Earth unfold through the seasons. We’ve long moved with their simple and sacred rhythm; they are the primary gateway through which the human engages with cycles of creation, destruction, and renewal. But today we estrange ourselves from the seasons with technology and human-centric myths, while an unraveling climate causes them to grow increasingly unfamiliar.
Reflecting a world where snow no longer arrives, annual migrations fall out of time, yet first blossoms still burst, Seasons, our sixth print edition, moves through three themes: requiem, invitation, and celebration—each a contemplation on the paradoxical ways the seasons now beckon us into intimate relationship.
This collection of haiku, essays, short fiction, photography, conversations, and poetry, infused with a spectrum of color and light, listens for the turning song of the seasons—for what vanishes and what remains—attentive to these moments that call us into communion with the Earth.