Paying Homage to Nikola Tesla With a Fitting Portrait
750 light globes — and a sly Edison slight — honor this visionary inventor
Tesla ‘Electric Portrait’ is a lighting installation and sculpture created as an homage to electrical pioneer Nikola Tesla. It was produced as a collaboration between lighting studio Ambience, a commercial lighting consultancy from Melbourne, Australia that provides lighting fabrication and design, and Duro Cubril, a conceptual graphic artist and commercial design director.
When viewed as a collective the lightbulbs recreate a portrait of Tesla. The concept behind the use of ‘traditional’ shaped light globes (usually associated with Edison) is a reference to the infamous rivalry between Thomas Edison and Nikola — with Tesla being largely unrecognized for a number of his groundbreaking achievements while Edison received great acclaim.
Built with 759 LED globes mounted to a grid, each globe was painted black with various diameters that were perfectly measured around the curve of each globe to allow exact light levels to escape at the five different sizes. The portrait required 759 globes and when turned on, 527 globes sit illuminated. The design is mounted on a black medium-density board that measures nearly 5 feet wide and 7 feet high.
The installation is designed to be engaging for the viewer whether it’s illuminated or powered off.
With the piece one of the great inventor’s concepts, discoveries, and likeness will live on to be commemorated by the global creative community.
Photography: Ben Glezer
Originally published at www.psfk.com on February 26, 2016.