Lighting Machine

Author: Maxim Velčovský
Date: 2018
Material: glass, metal
Location: K11 MUSEA Shopping Mall, Hong Kong
Manufacturer / maker: Lasvit

The Lighting Machine instal­la­tion was cre­at­ed for K11 Musea, a cul­tur­al and retail cen­tre in Hong Kong, as a site-specific work reflect­ing both the archi­tec­ture of the build­ing and the his­to­ry of the site. The object com­bines light, glass and more than 300 metres of met­al tub­ing into a mon­u­men­tal sus­pend­ed com­po­si­tion float­ing beneath the ceil­ing of the entrance space.

The instal­la­tion draws inspi­ra­tion from the his­to­ry of Hong Kong’s har­bour area, which for more than a cen­tu­ry was con­nect­ed with ship­ping, steam pow­er and heavy indus­try. The Lighting Machine trans­forms these his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences into a con­tem­po­rary visu­al lan­guage. Metal, light and steam cre­ate an evo­ca­tion of a machine that con­nects the indus­tri­al past of the site with its cur­rent transformation.

Maxim Velčovský: Lighting Machine
Maxim Velčovský: Lighting Machine

The seem­ing­ly chaot­ic net­work of pipes is com­ple­ment­ed by hand-painted curved met­al pan­els and a sys­tem of light and steam effects. At reg­u­lar inter­vals, the instal­la­tion lights up, dims, and releas­es clouds of steam; this trans­forms its sta­t­ic struc­ture into a dynam­ic spa­tial ele­ment while evok­ing the mech­a­nisms of the indus­tri­al era.

The instal­la­tion is not mere­ly a dec­o­ra­tive object but an inte­gral part of the space which it active­ly trans­forms. Through light and steam, its char­ac­ter is con­stant­ly shift­ing, respond­ing to the move­ment and pres­ence of vis­i­tors while cre­at­ing a dif­fer­ent atmos­phere with­in the entrance lob­by each time.