For Metis 2004, The SBLP presents LuxCorp. LuxCorp endeavours to construct a future
environment, or lifestyle. Through deliberate fictions, LuxCorp applies research
strategies to create real technology that incorporates elements of our living
planet.
Luxcorp is an installation that transforms the gallery into a space that resembles
a corporate biotech showroom displaying its prototype product line of light-emitting
domestic furniture. Two central objects provide light within the darkened space:
the organism generator is a state-of-the-art technology that sustains a super
colony of bioluminescent bacteria; and a Light-Emitting Chair (LEC).
The SBLP has approached bioluminescence as a technology that could be exploited
for application in the domestic consumer environment. Humans usually attempt to
eradicate bacteria from living spaces but here we ask the audience to bathe in
a light produced by bacteria and gauge whether or not this is a product that can
be developed for a broader market. This product is not of our time but a product
of the future, or rather, Science Fiction.
Visitors are invited to experience the growth of bacterial populations in a controlled
environment and to recline and relax in a concept chair that provides light. We
are proposing to place bioluminescence within the competitive market of electric
lighting not so much as a utility but as a luxury.