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Luke Jerram: A Photography-Analogized Patent Process for Creating and Reproducing an Ephemeral Retinal Afterimage that Dodges the Realm of Objective Documentation but Burns within the Subjective Arena of Comparative Social Experience
Clancco || 4 January 2009
"Intellectual Property: A Chronology Compendium of Intersections between Contemporary Art and Utility Patents," by Robert Thill, was first published in Leonardo: Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Science and Technology 37, no. 2 (2004), pp. 117-124. An expanded, adapted version of it is published here in serial form with the abstract, introduction, and summary extracted. Starting on March 10, 2008, a different project in the compendium will appear biweekly. Please note that each entry is a unique electronic publication and will not be stored in an online archive after the two-week publication period. Below is the twenty-first entry of this series (published here on January 5, 2009).
Luke Jerram, Patent drawings (figures 1--6) for "Retinal after-image projector and amplifier," Great Britain patent no. 2340621, filed 18 August 1998, granted 23 February 2000. Patent invention used to create Jerram's artwork Retinal Memory Volume.
Luke Jerram: A Photography-Analogized Patent Process for Creating and Reproducing an Ephemeral Retinal Afterimage that Dodges the Realm of Objective Documentation but Burns within the Subjective Arena of Comparative Social Experience
Luke Jerram's artwork Retinal Memory Volume is an intimate, precise, and interactive examination of visual and cognitive perception in relation to light, color, form, space, subject matter, and recall [1]. Developed with university optometry assistance and first made public in 1997 [2], the installation-based art project is secured by a patent named "Retinal after-image projector and amplifier," [3,4] which outlines Jerram's novel use of the retina of the viewer's eye as a kind of light-sensitive film, with the biological chemical rhodopsin playing a prominent role in the creation of a multicolored image from its activation by a flash of shaped white light [5]. Using flash guns that sequentially shoot light through three different stencils that together form a graphic image of a three-dimensional chair in perspective on the individual viewer's retina [6], Jerram's invention causes the viewer to see an afterimage of the chair in the space of the installation, creating a kind of interior light sculpture within the viewer. The stencils of the chair [7] and the viewing room are carefully scaled and calibrated to enhance the illusion experienced by the individual viewer that the chair has materialized in the space of the room with him or her, despite its being only a flash imprint on his or her retina. To activate an additional optical dimension of the project, the seated viewer is positioned in a chair facing a specific corner of the room in which a dim strobe light acts as what Jerram describes as a "blinking machine" [8], serving to hasten the flash images' change from a light afterimage to a darker afterimage, and intensifying the image of the chair's form and dimension within the space to approximate what could be described as a holographic-like, if fleeting, form. Jerram's project contains the paradox of the creation of an image that is visible only to the individual eye and mind that has received it, thus producing a singular experience that can then be repeated and duplicated in an assembly line of viewers seeking the same experience, which can mostly immediately be confirmed through individual accounts [9]. Fittingly, Jerram's project description on his Web site offers insightful "audience responses" to the experience in the installation space where the text for another kind of project might contain critical reviews [10]. In the same way that a scientific method can be used to confirm a theory, the experiment can be reliably tested, repeated, and expanded upon with variations [11]. It is interesting that one of the testimonials notes the force of suggestion on people's experience of the project [12], adding another dimension to the idea of perception in this context---as does Jerram in discussing his own problems identifying colors [13]. Jerram offers a description of the project that highlights its title: "The work allows people to observe their own eyesight, and asks the question, at which point does perception end and memory begin?" [14] With both images and memories often interconnected and impermanent, the project raises the fundamental question of where exactly the image of an object in front of an open eye actually resides [15,16].
--Robert Thill is an independent writer.
References and Notes
1. Jerram deliberately borrowed the title of the project from an artwork by Robert Irwin, a leader in the light and space movement in Southern California, to reveal his inspiration for the work. In an undated interview by Ben Wheeler, Jerram said, "[Irwin's] artwork employed after-images in a subtle and minimal way." Referencing his own training in provocative live art, he continued, "but I wanted to make an artwork that would demand people's attention and visually blast them out of the water." Jerram's project recalls Marcel Duchamp's experiments with optics and perception and his discussion of retinal and non-retinal art. The interview is available at a hyperlink named "installation_history_& interview" on Luke Jerram's Web site,
The rich-text-format file is named "installation_history___inteview." In a PC platform, the file should open on a double click; if you are using a Macintosh platform and the downloaded or opened document only shows the name of the project, a short description, and a list of exhibitions, you can open the document by using the TextEdit application to reveal more information about the project and the complete interview.
2. Under the heading "Retinal Memory Volume" in Jerram file [1].
3. Luke Jerram, "Retinal after-image projector and amplifier" and
Great Britain patent no. 2340621, filed 18 August 1998, published 23 February 2000 (the same patent also appears under the title "Illumination method and apparatus for creating retinal after-images"), the European Patent Office,
4. Asked about his intention in seeking patents, Jerram has written, "I thought, and still think there's potential for the technology to have more commercial applications---to be used in nightclub advertising/stadium lighting, perhaps? Rather than exploring this potential, I'm always far too interested in making the next artwork." To clarify the artist's idea of how this would work, the author asked, "Would this be like a group retinal exposure or something else?", to which Jerram replied, "As you say---group exposure." Two separate e-mails by Jerram to the author, 22 December 2008.
5. Under the heading "Technical Description" in Jerram file [1].
6. Ibid.
7. Jerram describes his choice of an image of a chair as follows: "I'm using a chair image as it's a generic object of a known size. Built in the three separate sections (top, side and front), the after-image of the chair demonstrates the three-dimensional potential for the technology. To experience the work the viewer sits on an identical and real chair in the installation space. The chair also makes sure the viewer faces the right direction!" Undated interview of Luke Jerram by Ben Wheeler in Jerram file [1]. However, it also brings to mind Joseph Kosuth's artwork One and Three Chairs (1965), which explores the epistemology of art, especially in relation to its linguistic structure. Through the juxtaposition of three representations of a chair---a wooden folding chair, a mounted photograph of the same type of chair, and a photographic enlargement of a dictionary definition of "chair"---Kosuth's work challenges viewers' assumptions about art and ideas. One of Three Chairs, 1965, Joseph Kosuth, the Collection, the MoMA.org,
8. Under the heading "Technical Description" in Jerram file [1].
9. The work has been exhibited in over nine different countries and "has been experienced on a 'one at a time' basis by over 100,000 people." Under the heading "Retinal Memory Volume" in Jerram file [1].
10. For example: "The chair is like a ghost or a solid memory. It is like an object in a dream, yet your eyes are open." Terrance, Lisbon, 1998, under "Audience Responses..." in Jerram file [1].
11. A related work by Jerram explores the visualization of numbers. See Matrix, Luke Jerram's Web site,
12. "When I first went in, I didn't know what to expect. I saw the after-image chair in black and white floating in the corner of the space. It was pretty amazing. But when I came out, someone told me they saw different colours---green, pink and blue? The next time I went in, the colours were instantly apparent, so was I just not 'tuned into' seeing colours originally?" Hilde, Graz, 2000, under "Audience Responses..." in Jerram file [1].
13. "I get colours mixed up and what I think I see changes according to what people tell me is actually there. I remember seeing a t-shirt change from grey to pink before my eyes after someone told me its true colour." Jerram further explains, "The fact I'm colour blind has given me a natural interest in visual perception though, which I suppose could be one reason why I've become an artist? I like the fact that with after-images I can affect and recalibrate the viewer's vision. For me the work highlights the fact that we all see the world differently and that our senses are calibrated uniquely." Undated interview of Luke Jerram by Ben Wheeler in Jerram file [1].
14. Ibid.
15. Jerram's patent appears not to have been renewed by the artist as of 18 August 2004,
16. Diagrams, instructions, and stencils for making a Retinal Memory Volume installation are reproduced in Luke Jerram, Art in Mind: An Artist's Journey Exploring the Edges of Perception (Bristol, UK: Watershed Arts Trust, 2008), 15,16.
Previous Articles in the Series
"Catherine Richards: Patent Protection for the Mediation of Emotions," December 15, 2008
"Mars Patent: Posing an Innovative Challenge to Earth Culture," December 1, 2008
"L. A. Angelmaker: What Constitutes Completion in Art, Invention, or Anything Else?," November 17, 2008
"Steve Mann: Patent Archives as Venues for Disclosure and Enclosure," November 3, 2008
"Hideki Nakazawa: Art-Related Patent Inventions in the Framework of Identity, with Language as a Dividing Form and Subject Matter as a Connecting Form," October 14, 2008
"Luis Camnitzer: The Vanity of the Inventor and the Vanity of the Artist," September 22, 2008
"Olga and Alexander Florensky's Russian Patent: A "Science-Technical Museum" Displays an Invented Truth," September 8, 2008
"Christoph Keller: Resisting the Anti-utilitarianism of Art," August 25, 2008
"Lisa Schmitz's World Artistic Property Organization: A Patent-Office Equivalent for Art," August 11, 2008
"Walter Martin: Contemporary Witness to Historic Patent Drawings, " July 28, 2008
"Michael Asher: Circumstance and Perception of Originality," July 14, 2008
"Hubert Duprat: Stakeholders in Art, Science, Industry, Theory, and History Converge on a Fragile Casing Created by Individual Insect Larvae for the Purpose of Self-Protection," June 27, 2008
"Buckminster Fuller: Visual Reflections on Patent Inventions," June 13, 2008
"Nancy Burson: Exploring the Passage of Time through Morphing Portraits," June 2, 2008
"The European Patent Office: Contemporary Art as a Transcending Force in an Institutional Patent Context," May 19, 2008
"William W. Adkins: An Untrained Innovator Is Reclassified as a Visionary Artist," May 5, 2008
"Alice Hutchins: Moveable Elements in a Personal Magnetic Field," April 21, 2008
"Konrad Lueg: Centralizing the Spectator in an Ephemeral Art Invention," April 7, 2008
"Jean Tinguely: Kinetic Sculpture as an Expressive Drawing and Painting Device," March 24, 2008
"Yves Klein: Artistic Expression, Technological Progress, and Spiritual Evolution," March 10, 2008
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