Transient light: Enchanted encounters with dappled light

Abstract

The Dapple Light Project is a moving video and live dance performance installation, offering intimate encounters with dappled light as a vibratory place of sensuous enchantment. The article illuminates enchantment experiences in the videoing processes and installation scenography of this project, approaching wonder as a secular attunement with the physical, the digital and the moving presence of this elusive light. Jane Bennett’s theories on materiality shape reflections on the wonder experience and inform a view of enchantment in action. Laura Marks’ writings on haptic visuality and Gaston Bachelard’s contemplations on reverie and home offer intimate and sensuous dwellings for reflecting on mysteries of body, abode and interiority as materialized in this video installation. The article contemplates the transient fluctuations of dappled light as embodied enchantment and considers this in relation to Buddhist understandings of impermanence and dependant arising.