Historiological Redshift

Interactive video installation
Yale School of Architecture
2022

Concept, technical and fabrication lead
In collaboration with Chloe Hou

Historiological Redshift engages a 865 BC Assyrian relief to discuss issues of time in space.

Cosmological Redshift describes the phenomenon in which relativistic doppler effect combined with expanding space makes light increase in wavelength as it travels to us. Therefore, under our observation, events and entities that are further away, and therefore more ancient, shift towards the red and infra-red end of the spectrum. 

When observing the universe through light, time is distance and distance is time. 

In the small staircase landing in front of a relief featuring King Ashurnasirpal and the Tree of Life, such a phenomenon is recreated. The Assyrian relief is furthest back in both space and time (infra-red). When someone walks through the landing, their presence, a new historiological event, creates a fresh trace across the canvas (ultra-violet). The traces, constantly generated by new visitors, gradually experience redshift over time, moving across the entire visible spectrum, and eventually become nearly indistinguishable with what came before and what comes after, merging into the space-time continuity of history and human activity.