By now, you may have been out and about for some time, and perhaps you’re enjoying the sight of all Amsterdam’s house fronts at night. All those windows picked out by the light. Warm light, cold light, sometimes even purple or some other strange colour. And every window seems to tell a story, about the people who live behind it.
Not that long ago, a lit window would have been very unusual. Most homes didn’t have electricity, and people would be sitting around the weak light of an oil lamp, far from their windows. The city was actually a lot darker when we didn’t have electricity and incandescent light bulbs. These bulbs basically changed everything. Our day-night rhythm, what our streets looked like… everything. Nevertheless, we took leave of this specific technology years ago.Nowadays, we have LED lighting. A lot more efficient – making them better for the environment.
Still, we could have been nicer to the incandescent light bulb before consigning it to the ash heap of history. All of a sudden, it was treated as a thing of no value, something that we needed to get rid of. But the light bulb deserves a dignified send-off. That’s the idea behind this artwork, Gloeilamp (the Dutch word for incandescent light bulb). It takes proper leave of a good design that has nevertheless had its day. The inflatable bulbs floating here were made by artist and inventor Theo Botschuijver. Through them, he wants to pay his respects to illustrious predecessors like Thomas Edison, Alexander Lodygin, Joseph Swan, Henry Woodward, Matthew Evans, Heinrich Göbel and others. The people who dispelled the darkness after a ‘light bulb went off in their head’.
Fun fact
Remember the giant flying pig on the cover of Pink Floyd’s album Animals from 1977? That was actually made by Theo Botschuijver. An image search for his name brings up all sorts of amazing inflatable sculptures and interactive installations. And there’s a strong chance that, like me, you’ve never seen any of them in real life. But now you have! And in a few weeks or months, this work will probably pop up among the results too.
