Will Laslett
Falling Light (2024) is a kinetic light work drawing from notions of emergent complexity in natural systems. Inspired by the behaviour of sunlight falling through the foliage of trees.
In the canopy of a tree, the effect of sequential layers of foliage at varying heights is to create a complexity in its dappled light far greater than a simple and crisp two dimensional shadow. Upper layers serve to variously occlude, reveal and refract the sun’s surface to subsequent layers, creating an emergent complexity from principles of relative simplicity. Often observed in nature but seldom created artificially, the beauty we perceive in this natural phenomenon is perhaps reflective of the magical complexity and subtlety of the world we inhabit.
In Falling Light a source of light moves within a progressive series of formal gridded louvres, projecting an image, natural in inspiration, but through a form reflective of the artificial world we inhabit. A projected image provides an intricate and nuanced two dimensional snapshot of an inherently three dimensional system.
Will Laslett (b. 1984) is a London based multidisciplinary artist and designer. Working predominantly in the field of kinetic and installation art, his work combines techniques of craft and automated production to distil function or concept to its most simple essence or form. As a lead member of the London based collective practice United Visual Artists he has led the physical design and realisation of much of the studio’s physical and installation based works of the last decade.
Coming from an education in architecture, Will co-founded the artistic practice Kite and Laslett in 2010 with an output focused on site specific audio, visual and kinetic installation works. Since joining United Visual Artists he has contributed to and developed works employing a diversity of technologies, exploring themes of the subjective experience, perceptive phenomena, and our often abstract interpretation of our largely inconceivable universe.