Research
Situated between visual art and perceptual science, Seth Riskin uses light to communicate with the human visual brain. He develops tools and techniques for reducing light to low-dimensional geometric figures.
In situ, Riskin articulates illumination from his body, in the manner of vision, for empirical studies of low-level perception in order to understand how space and time are constructed in visual experience.
The original tools and methods of his Light Dance artwork expand opportunities for exchange between visual art and vision neuroscience.
Research Interests
Questions & Methods
Riskin trained as a visual artist (painting and drawing) and gymnast before arriving at MIT in 1987 for graduate study at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, a research center for the technological advancement of art in society. At MIT, he devised body-mounted light instruments for combining his physical ability and visual art into an original art form, Light Dance.
In dark environments, “units” of light information (e.g. points or lines) project from Riskin’s body to the boundaries of the room. By conducting the nuanced control of the low-dimensional light projections—distance, direction, orientation, and speed—he shapes higher-dimensional percepts in viewer experience. A line sweeps into a plane; a plane curves into a 2D manifold that cues perception of form and depth.
This method enables Riskin to study the construction and deconstruction of perceptual space and time, an approach he has continued to re1fine over the past 30 years through original performances and benchtop experiments. Riskin’s precise use of light “collapses” the complexity of the visual world to units of visual information. He approaches the study of low-level vision through means external to the brain, by the geometric reduction of light, diminishing the difference between stimulus and percept. In a sense, Riskin turns vision inside out; by nuanced manipulations of light minima from the body, Riskin evokes low-level perceptual responses, making them accessible to conscious study.
Riskin’s work proposes dialogue with research in vision neuroscience concerning how space and time are encoded in the visual system. Following in the artistic tradition of probing perception by physical creation, Riskin’s artwork, research and teaching aim at vital exchange between empirical and theoretical methods for collaborative discoveries on the nature of perception.