Tracing Light brings artists and scientists together around a phenomenon that is both ordinary and difficult to grasp. Thomas Riedelsheimer creates a visually impressive documentary, though its ideas sometimes remain less clear than its images.
The film moves between Scottish landscapes and research environments. Artists including Julie Brook and the duos Semiconductor and Brunner/Ritz approach light through materials and installations, while scientific conversations offer different ways of understanding it.
Experimental images and slow motion make the subject sensuous. Brook's work is particularly striking in the sparse Scottish landscape. The installation Black Hole Sun provides another compelling encounter between light, darkness and the way an object changes its surroundings.
Fred Frith and Gabby Fluke-Mogul's music supports the exploratory mood. Its delicacy and slight dissonances fit the feeling of approaching unfamiliar territory. The connection between art and science becomes something to experience, rather than only an idea to be described.
The conversations can also be vague. Some sequences repeat similar impressions without adding enough precision, and a historical framework would have provided useful context. Inspiration occasionally takes the place of explanation.
For me, Tracing Light is worthwhile as a meditative visual journey. It invites new ways of looking, even if viewers wanting greater depth and clarity in its arguments may find the information less satisfying than the atmosphere.