Innocent lamps defend themselves at dusk
When simple objects are forced to protest their innocence you know the terrorists are having a laugh at our expense. With a relatively small number of actual assaults (and the threat of many) they've managed to make us (and, of course, the people in charge of policing the streets) indecently afraid rather than indecently indignant at not only the assault on our lives but our civil liberties. Anyway, soapbox to one side, here's an art project that encapsulates the whole daft situation; titled Declarative Lamps, they're innocent illumination reminding us that they're not trying to blow our ankles off.
The handiwork of Sternlab's R. Stern and Rees Shad, the lamps are fashioned from standard solar-powered garden lights and are given flickering LEDs (to simulate fireflies) and the sentence "I am not a bomb" in twelve different languages. They're temperature controlled, speaking more frequently in warmer weather than cold.
The Declarative Lamp Project is on show as part of the Kingston, NY Sculpture Biennial in October 2007. How long, do you think, before a trigger-happy policeman decides that the lady doth protest too much, and assumes that they could only be bombs because they're denying it so vigorously?