Liquid Light

After a few failed attempts, I found out that making "glow liquid" out of Mountain Dew is a hoax. It's disappointing, but makes me feel a little better about the ingredients in Mountain Dew.

There is a way to make glow liquid yourself, but the chemicals are expensive, so I caved in and ordered larger glow sticks with more liquid in them.

In the meantime, I've been thinking about the core of my glow stick project. I'm fascinated with embodying light in a liquid, and the surreal quality of experiencing it as a liquid no longer trapped within a container. This has led to countless broken glow sticks in my apartment. Here's a video of me pouring "liquid light" into a glass:


This sparked the train of thought that led me to where I am now:

Fascination with glow sticks --> ordering a lot of bendy glow bracelets online --> twisting glow sticks into different shapes --> realizing these bracelets could be twisted to look like compact fluorescent light bulbs --> realizing that actually, they didn't look anything like light bulbs after all. Sadness. --> decided to create a hollow light bulb, fill it with glow liquid, and drain it --> acquired a hollow light bulb look-alike from a glassblower --> fill, drain, record the change over time... but what happens after it leaves the light bulb?

This can challenge the way we view light- it starts as a familiar form (the light bulb) and over time the bulb is drained, and the light only exists in splatters on the floor. It also embodies the energy we use, oddly quantifying the light by its escape over time. In thinking of how to push the project further, I'm currently pondering a setup like this:

The light still runs and gathers, and the form on which it drips is very simple (basically a half-sphere, with raised edges so the liquid doesn't run all over the floor) but the patterns the liquid will form won't be simple. They won't be predictable either. It's controlled in some ways, but random enough that I won't actually know what the final product will look like until it's happening. As soon as my larger glow sticks arrive in the mail, I can start experimenting.