For Albert Einstein, the mysterious – that which defies description – was the origin of science and art. His theories and, simultaneously, Pablo Picasso’s art, fundamentally changed our understanding of the world. They understood the world to be more magical and complex than is dreamt of.

In Tracing Light, science and art come together to illuminate the mysteries of light: light which is the starting point of the journey into abstraction.

Tracing Light brings together leading physicists and artists from Scotland, England and Germany, from the far edge of Scotland’s Outer Hebrides to the Max Planck Institute in Erlangen, in a quest to understand and animate light. 

As part of a guest residency at the University of Glasgow, the artist duo Semiconductor – Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt – is working with single-photon avalanche diode cameras, aka SPAD, which can be used to film the propagation of light in space. This collaboration between artists and physicists leads them directly into discussion about the nature of the speed of light and of time.

Julie Brook, one of a handful of female land artists, takes us on her search for light and colour to remote areas of Northern Scotland and into the marble quarries of Carrara, Italy. Fire, the eruption of stored sunlight, is particularly close to her heart. During their research at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Light in Erlangen, the artist duo Brunner/Ritz are immediately struck by the spacious foyer, a rotunda with a round glass roof and uniformly white, towering walls – an architecture designed to provide a suitable stage for light as it changes through the day. Intrigued by the inscrutable properties of light, with which they are confronted during a laser light table-football session with the scientists, they ask themselves the question: “What is the opposite of light?

Talking about light can seem confusing… well-nigh impossible.  The quantum world does not align with our logic or our language and we often reach the limit of our understanding. Tracing Light does not want to propose explanations. Rather, Thomas Riedelsheimer’s images, in combination with the encounters between artists and scientists, aim to open up a space for mystery. This is where the magic and the sensuality of his film begin.