In winter 2002, London Fieldworks, artists Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson, presented their new installation within the Boiler House of the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station. It was an interactive piece about light, produced following their extensive research in Greenland.
In August 2001, they traveled to remote North East Greenland to record the transition from 24-hour daylight to the twilight onset of winter. They used a spectroradiometer to periodically measure and record light, and using a range of biomonitors, the body’s physiological responses. The Polaria fieldwork generated an interactive virtual daylight chamber (a self illuminating machine) inspired by post-industrial concerns over the quality of the working environment and medical research into the beneficial effects of polarised, full spectrum light.
Within the exhibition, the audience could experience a version of the light Gilchrist and Joelson had experienced in Greenland through a biofeedback interface that put mild electronic current into the body.
See also Little Earth, 2005, by London Fieldworks