Page 55 - Studio International - June 1967

ess, Nazli Nour, called on her and asked if Liliane might evaporate, but it would condense again (a five years without any particular purpose in mind)
could devise a way to make poems move. Thus little oil helped it to form generous droplets), and on top of the disc containing the drops of water.
the first 'poem machines' came into being. ( John it captured the light alive and vibrant. At last she She found that it not only magnified the drops but
Furnival was inspired by them.) She first exhibited had her lenses which would not harden and die. also reflected them inside its upper surface. Next
them at the GALERIE DE LA LIBRAIRIE ANGLAISE in But perhaps the strangest thing was that she had she contrived to rotate the disc in such a way that
Paris in 1963. completely forgotten her earlier idea of using the ball moved over the surface. Finally she added
The poems are broken up into single words water, and has only recently discovered it in her two or more balls, sometimes of varying sizes. 'It
arranged in columns. As the cylinder turns words notebook for 1963. In that same entry she anti-
get linked in different ways. The moving cylinder cipated the next stage in the development: the
captures the rhythm and even the sound of the placing of crystal balls on top of the plexiglass.
Facing page
poem. 'The image became sound.' (It has since Last year in Berne (where she exhibited in the
Liliane Lijn at her exhibition at the Indica Gallery in
been discovered that deaf people can be made to KUNSTHALLE in the 'White on White' exhibition) March 1967
hear sounds when light is shone into their eyes.) she had thought of putting marbles in water.
The poem machines were first in boxes; later they Arriving in Greece with only completed works, Below Two views of Poemkon 1966
(words of Leonard Marshal)
were on free-standing cylinders; now they are on she tried out instead the effect of placing a crystal
cones (Poemkons)—this allows for variations of ball (she had been carrying it around with her for Bottom Echo-Light 1967, perspex
speed according to the size of the letters and their
position on the cones.
The poem machines had grown out of experi-
ments with cylinders. In 1965, Liliane discovered
new possibilities in revolving cylinders. While in
Greece she found some small cylindrical oil-filters
used in trucks. They were covered with tiny lines,
like wires on a resistance coil. When the cylinders
are made to revolve, waves of light begin to dance
across the surface. She called them Line of Light
Cylinders. 'The light has to go over obstacles just
like us. We're so close to light.' Once more she
was tackling the problem of getting light to move,
but she had not yet found a way to get light to
move in perspex.
In 1963 she had made some progress in this
direction. She experimented with turning lenses,
and made small projectors which threw waves of
light on to the perspex block. She called this
'echo-light'. 'I want to walk through the trans-
parent world of photon light', she wrote in
February 1964, `to work with the source of light
... capture electron images. My "echo-lights" are
silent spherical reflections, photon planets echo-
ing themselves.' But, though the light moved, it
did not vibrate as natural light should. Its movement
was restricted by the direction of the light source.
A way of making the light vibrate suggested
itself, however. When polymer drops were injected
into the perspex, they remained liquid for fifteen
minutes and during that time the reflected light
remained alive, as in dewdrops on a cobweb. But
then the polymer crystallized. `I'd wait fifteen
minutes and be sad when it crystallized.' The
problem was to find some way of keeping the drops
liquid. Liliane thought of making a hole in the
perspex and putting water into it, but it was not
feasible. Meanwhile, to cut down costs, she had
taken to using a thin sheet of perspex with a space
between and a white background, instead of
solid blocks. She next tried spinning discs of
perspex, using a static light source, but still was
not satisfied. Then, in Paris in 1966, while experi-
menting with mercury—she had hoped that it
would split up if spun in a disc, and coagulate as
the disc slowed down, but it didn't—she solved her
problem quite unexpectedly.
She had washed the mercury in water and some
of the water had condensed on the perspex, form-
ing small drops which reflected the light as the
liquid polymer lenses had done. But, unlike the
polymer lenses, the water did not crystallize. It