Rowland Ricketts' "Ai no Keshiki" – or "Indigo Views" – was originally developed in Tokushima, a Japanese prefecture where Ricketts spent time apprenticing with indigo farmers and dyers in the late 1990s. Reconfigured for the Renwick Gallery, this installation is the result of many collaborators. In the summer of 2017, 450 people from ten countries volunteered to live with a small length of cloth dyed with Awa indigo, a varietal native to Tokushima. Now in this gallery, the indigo cloth was placed in hand-crafted wooden boxes with a small central opening to allow light to penetrate, bearing witness to the everyday moments of each participant’s life. Variations in color, resulting from the intensity and frequency of light exposure, are a testament to this diversity of experience.

These subtle distinctions tie directly to the work’s title, which roughly translates as “love for keshiki,” a Japanese philosophical concept centered on the landscape or “scenery” of an object. Through the lens of keshiki, the fading of bright blue indigo isn’t a loss. Instead, it speaks to the way things inherently change over time, offering new scenery with each engagement.

[text source : Smithsonian American Art Museum blog]

Pixelumen Lab Creative Director, Robbie Hayes, worked closely with the artist, Rowland Ricketts, and Smithsonian Lighting Designer, Scott Rosenfeld, to light the installation. Using COVID-19 statistics captured by the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization, the design team dynamically change the intensity and movement of the light bulbs suspended within the installation. The data determining these changes is derived from the global coronavirus death toll as compared to local confirmed cases in the city of Washington, DC, the greater metropolitan area, the United States, and the world. The changing of light intensity and the position of the central light bulb affects how shadows of the indigo-dyed fabric appear across the gallery throughout the day. The show dynamically changes throughout the day and does not repeat over an 8-hour period. This collaboration deepens an immersive experience that reflects the world's ability to hold immense beauty while facing uncertainty.