Working with light is a complex art, especially when light itself becomes the subject of life. Emotional light, intimate light, light that dances. Pietro Cardarelli, a lighting and visual artist, mixes lighting design, live video, video mapping, live media, graphic design, contemporary set design and performing art every day.
Born under the sign of Aries, Pietro explores the constellations of light, giving us the magical wonder of limelight, illuminating our deepest parts in the moment in which the light passes through us and forces us to ‘reflect’.
Giorgio Cipolletta: Tell me about your artistic research. How did it start and how is it evolving? Can you describe your work, your methods and your sources of inspiration?
Pietro Cardarelli: For as long as I can remember, I have always thought about light in all its forms. An irresistible fascination, like being a moth.
My research is mainly based on two aspects: the way space is manipulated by light and light as a physical element with a life of its own, capable of interacting with everything around it. In other words, light can be experienced as an essence able to live autonomously and generate relations with the Other.
My work started from the desire to activate these relationships.
Light is an actor or a musician on the stage, a dancer in space, a luminous artist who draws the audience in and encourages them to participate.
From this journey, which I pursued together with many other artists from different fields, I arrived at more intimate and personal work dedicated to spatial manipulation through the creation of installations and immersive environments where the public could undertake an relational journey, which began in outer space until it was then cancelled out, arriving at its inner space.
My multidisciplinary research is totally embraced by light. It represents intimacy and, at the same time, visual space, technology and a phenomenon of ‘reflection’.
James Turrell and Ólafur Elìasson were, and still are, a great source of inspiration.
I must also mention a dazzling installation by the Danish artist, ‘Room for one colour‘ (1997). In the same way, more recent artists such as Robert Henke or Yann Nguema are absolutely essential.
When I start a new work, I always give myself the aim to research and gain deep knowledge and respect for the artist I have to ‘dress’ or the space I have to ‘inhabit’. Once I empathise with the light, I simply try to become the first viewer of my work. As far as possible, I try to reach that threshold of astonishment and emotion where I am the first to be surprised.
Bringing light, which is a living element for me, must be an almost ‘magical’ gesture, that element in magic realism that changes the known space of reality. Another fundamental step, however, is study – careful and meticulous to the point of mania. Just as I want to respect the space or the artist who will host my lighting design, I also try to respect the light itself. If this hybridisation works, then the viewers will find themselves in an immersive dimension through which they can deeply experience this condition of ‘ecstatic rapture’.
What is the secret of light? What is your relationship with it?
First of all, one would need to reflect on quantum physics, but this is not the place to do so, but certainly one must keep in mind the duality of light (particles/waves) as the focus of my research and an in-depth study of the truth of its ‘living’ nature.
Why am I talking about life? Because its physical being interacts with us and lives with us through what we see. It provides us with a vision of what we consider reality.
In the course of the light workshops that I have held, I have experienced how people can ‘feel’ light even when they cannot see it.
My increasingly close relationship with light is based on two fundamental elements: the ‘physical’ perception of light and luminance. The latter is described as the ‘quality-quantity’ of the brightness that reaches our retina. This ratio between the light intensity emitted by a source in the direction of the observer and the apparent area of the emitting surface as seen by the observer determines the phenomenon of the experience of light itself.
Starting from an awareness of the ‘subjectivity’ of reality, my artistic production moves precisely by capturing the perceptive, inner and emotional part of light. The universe I explore is exactly related to the concept of space and place. In fact, I speak of the ‘manipulation’ of space in my work because we are acting in this boundary between perception and luminance. In other words, it is this effect, Ganzfeld, that Turrell elaborates in his works, where the light that viewers see (without them seeing its source) is only their perception – space-mind. To give another example, the installation for the performance Schönheit (2023) that I created in the Aaper forest in Düsseldorf is based precisely on the principle of altering spatial perception. The installation is invisible with hidden devices in the natural environment and what is being captured is the nature of the forest itself, natural sunlight. Only by standing in the performance area does the viewer have the perception of sensory alteration but, at the same time, the forest remains the same with its natural vegetation.
Can you tell us about the ‘Birth’ lamp project? What is it? How does it work? Where did you previously experiment with this and how are you planning to develop it? What is its main feature?
The Birth lamp actually emerged out of a kind of ‘obsession’, a life-long dream which grew out of the need to have an extremely versatile lighting device that could even exist as a slim, minimal body. This created artificial light takes on the appearance of the classic lighthouse-light while, at the same time, generating life because it is itself a performer.
The Birth lamp is very versatile on its own, able to create multi-effects and different types of light.
Birth is an ’emotional’ lamp that can respond to various prompts and interact with dancers, actors or musicians, etc…
The lamp can both generate light through its interior and modify reflected light. The shape of the Birth lamp evokes a star produced by extrusions of prismatic elements similar to those found inside car headlamps currently on the market.
Only six ‘Birth’ lamps currently exist. The lamp was created thanks to the professional collaboration of Ernesto Ottavi’s ‘Tecno Service’, ‘Realizzazioni Castelli’ and ‘Fanini’. Birth lamps have accompanied concerts by Sergio Cammariere, Anne Paceo, the Yellowjackets, Dee Dee Bridgewater and Emiliano D’Auria.
Birth lamps are currently ‘dancing’ together with Giosy Sanpaolo in the ‘15e36‘ project by the contemporary dance company Hunt. This project, which is very important to me, allows me to interact intimately with the performer, like a pas de deux: body and light dancing together. In the future, I would like to use them in an installation which I am working on, where the lamps can respond and interact directly with the public through a system of sensors.
In your career you have had the opportunity to mix digital art, pure light, installation art for performing and lighting for music. How do you manage to mix and manage all these arts?
I don’t just work on my own, but rather in frequent collaboration with other artists, who I also support. I have always tried to bring light, with its various shapes and nuances, together with continuous technological research, creating a lot of projects with different artists. The idea underlying the way light takes shape in my projects has allowed me to give total freedom to its spectrum, reaching out to all artistic fields. I have always wanted to go beyond the limits of light, extending it to theatres, museums, but also to town squares, industrial spaces and even to business companies. What I love about light is precisely its versatility and its ability to be inherently site-specific.
Personally, with each work, I always position myself as one more subject in connection with the performer, but also a graphic designer, an architect or any other subject. In other words, light becomes the active subject and co-star of every work.
Regarding your connection with light, do you think the artist has a social responsibility and thus should be an instrument of collective consciousness?
Personally, like many other artists, I feel a social responsibility due to the high communicability of the media I have chosen to use for my work. In all my projects there is always an element of reflection for the viewers. Every work stems from ideas based on a deep need for communication. In my latest installation immersed in greenery, ‘Growing Lights‘, viewers are invited to experience this artwork slowly, re-appropriating the illuminated space.
In addition to the aesthetic aspect of new lighting with the multiple ‘viewpoints’ I can create, there is certainly a reflection on ecological issues, also dictated by the topic of global warming, now a subject of collective discussion.
Through my studies and work with artificial intelligence, long before the global interest we are now witnessing, I have always set out to explore this issue from a human perspective and the relationship between human being and technology. Human beings (with their emotions) together with light (with its sensitive perception) are the ‘directors’ of my projects.
Light is a complex phenomenon – think of the phrase ‘coming into the light’ to indicate birth, life itself – and has always been a natural element, as well as being represented in pictorial art.
For me today, this act of ‘coming into the light’ (into the world) represents, above all, the reaching of a profound knowledge of oneself, one’s inner self, and the relationship of the self with society and surrounding reality.
Art is not pure mental lucubration for me, but an important instrument of social communication as it is able to speak in spaces where other media cannot reach. Therefore, for me, the artist also has an ‘ethical-moral’ duty, if you can call it that, because their work is not an end in itself, but already inherently conveys a message. Today, in the contemporary art scene, perhaps my thoughts may seem a little naïve, but I think it is very important to bring some issues back into the discussion – issues which are perhaps no longer banal and obvious. When I give courses and lectures today, I often notice that people are much more interested in achieving ‘technological cool’ for its own sake, rather than using light simply as a means of deep and emotional communication.
What project have you got in mind but have not yet realised?
The relationship between light and science is a field that I have begun to explore beyond technological research. I am currently working with Dr. Bruna Corradetti from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and together we are developing a project spanning art and the research of human cell behaviour. The fusion of technology, art and biology will create an interactive project that is not only reflective for the public but also, above all, useful in the field of medicine for the clarification of important and innovative ‘points of view’ in research itself. Of course, in this project the focus is only on light with its emotional quality generated by the subjects involved and with those who enable this: ‘human’ subject-object light.
This research is currently very exciting and I hope this project will ‘see the light’ very soon.
PIETRO CARDARELLI is a Set Designer, Lighting and Visual Artist and Creative Director. Artistic production, graphics, from the promotion of the image to live image (lighting design, live video, video mapping, live media, graphic design, contemporary set design, staging and installations), performing art, video art and digital art are the artistic expressions that lead Pietro to work as Creative Director for singers, artists, bands and music producers, stylists, choreographers, art facilities and companies. He is also a lecturer on several training courses (“Creative Manipulation of Space”, “Visual Art”, and “Lighting Design”). From 2016 to 2020, Cardarelli was on the scientific board for creative urban regeneration projects (‘SPACE – Creative Contemporary Spaces’ and ‘Contemporary Invasions’). He participated in various art exhibitions and group shows in Italy and abroad. Since 2014, Cardarelli has been the lighting and visual artist for composer, author and musician Dardust (Dario Faini), involved in all tour dates in Italy and abroad. Since 2015, he has been the responsible lighting designer and visual art director for musician and composer Ralf Schmid’s projects ‘Pyanook’ and ‘PyanookLab’ at the Kubus studio of the ZKM in Karlsruhe and the Humboldtsaal in Freiburg (Germany), debuting at the European live Neue Meister Music in Berlin. Cardarelli also collaborates with the augmented reality research studio MarbleAR in Los Angeles. Since 2019 he has been a lighting and visual artist for choreographer and performer Morgan Nardi at the FFT in Düsseldorf, Germany, where in 2020 he created several interactive digital installations, one in 2022 in the central Hofgarten, in the Northpark, and in 2023 in the Aaper Forest. In 2021, as an artist, Cardarelli signed the International Light Art Manifesto. The same year, he created the research project ‘Yūgen_a mood place’© on the interaction between light and food. In 2023, he created a series of light installations in the former Sgl-Carbon disused industrial area (Ascoli Piceno). At the same time, he created the ‘Birth’© lamp, used in concerts by Sergio Cammariere, Yellowjackets, Anne Paceo and Emiliano D’Auria Quartet. His latest work is ‘Yume’ by Elisa Maestri, a project by MeTe Teatro/La Casa di Asterione, where light and disability come together.
images: (cover 1) Pietro Cardarelli, «LampadaBirth», 2023 (2-3) Pietro Cardarelli, «Phisiologus», 2019 (4) Pietro Cardarelli, «Pea Wall», 2018 (5-6) Pietro Cardarelli, «Schönheit», 2023 (7) Pietro Cardarelli, «Phisiologus», 2019 (8) Pietro Cardarelli, portrait
