Exploratorium Artist-in-Residence Tristan Duke in Conversation

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Hybrid event: Join us live in person or livestream on the Exploratorium’s YouTube channel or Facebook page.

At first the thing presents itself as a thick black monolith, hovering in midair at the heart of a gleaming white cube of a room—not a monolith, two monoliths perpendicularly wedged, the one fast against the other. And nested there, four feet out from where the dense black plinths intersect, floats an amorphous immaterial globe of light, which seems to bob in rhythm with each step the visitor takes toward it. Step closer and lean your head into the ball of light, at which point, like magic, the entire black edifice will simply disappear.

Welcome to Aperture Lucida, the latest creation of the young Southern California artist and inventor Tristan Duke, product of over two years’ work as artist-in-residence alongside fellow materials wizards at the Exploratorium. The piece veritably brims with surprising implications, which Lawrence Weschler, the author of Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, will assist Mr. Duke in teasing out. Aperture Lucida opened at the Exploratorium in February 2020, only a few short weeks before shelter-in-place orders were issued in San Francisco. The work is on display again as the museum is now open to the public once again after nearly 16 months of closure.

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