Lux Aqua Pura
Lux Aqua Pura is a site-specific video installation, created by Marianna Haniger, for the Water Tower at Seattle's Volunteer Park. The Water Tower, which is one of the oldest water storage structures in Seattle, is a 95-foot high concentric brick building, which encapsulates an 880,000-gallon steel water tank. Two separate stairwells wind their way to the observation level, between the brick facade and steel tank, forming a double helix. Lux Aqua Pura consisted of two installations, one in each stairwell, as well as a companion virtual-reality website that ran from 1999 - 2001.
The exhibition illuminated the dark stairways bringing sensual blue watery images to this Victorian edifice. The project revealed, as with X-ray vision, the memory of the tower's contents, summoning ghosts into the echoey hollow.
The North Stairwell expounded on the Tower's contents: water. Flowing water was projected onto the stairs by video projectors hanging from the structural trusses above. As viewers ascended the north stairwell, they were bathed in a luminous waterfall. Their bodies interrupted the projection transferring its watery surface onto the skin.
The South Stairwell was an audio installation, created in collaboration with Eddie Sams, which explored ancient themes of entrapment and release associated with the archetypal symbol of the tower. The laughter of children ricocheted from speaker to speaker working its way up and down the stairwell like rushing electrons in a thunder cloud, one was caught in the crossfire of audio waves.
Funded by: King County Arts Commission, Seattle Arts Commission and
Seattle Public Utilities.