Media and performance artist Ian Winters, like everyone else, spent most of his time at home during the pandemic. Considering how this experience could be expressed artistically, he conceived “Domestic Light,” which for two years used windowsill sensors in nearly 100 sites globally to record what he describes as “multispectral traces of home.”
The project began as a collaborative survey of ambient light, its website explains, observing the spectral qualities of domestic space and how these imperceptible shifts shape our sense of home and the passage of time.
“In late 2021, everything was online, which is a strange place to be,” Winters said in a phone interview. “Our entire perceptual world had been replaced by a screen.” He explained that normally, humans use natural light to imprint on the place they think of as “home.”
So he reached out to people he knew around the world and asked them to reach out to others, asking if they were willing to host a specially made sensor that would record light in their homes for what turned out to be years. Ultimately nearly 100 people agreed, and of those sensors, 95 were used—some in very remote places, such as the headwaters of the Amazon. Other sites included Lagos, Nigeria; Alice Springs, Australia; Belgrade, Serbia; and Hong Kong.
The archive of data collected now drives an immersive light-and-sound installation of 240 instruments—replaying planetary rhythms as lived color, according to the project’s website.
“‘Domestic Light’ is a planetary-scale artwork that turns the changing color of domestic light into a shared, embodied composition,” the website states.
East Bay alt-art fans can get a first look at the still-evolving project when Winters presents it at The MilkBar, his studio in Richmond, on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1. What visitors will see, he said, is a group of 24 custom-designed multi-spectral light modules, spanning six feet and capable of producing light across the visible spectra and beyond.
Later in 2026, “Domestic Light” will culminate with two immersive, 25-ft., 240-light sphere installations, premiering in San Francisco and Brighton, U.K., with live performances by collaborators including Bay Area composer Pamela Z and choreographers Daiane Lopes da Silva, Mary Armentrout and Paige Starling Sorvillo. Viewers will see and feel the seasons going by, Winters said.
While engaged with “Domestic Light,” Winters was also aware of the connection to the surveillance many of us now feel we are under constantly. He writes about this: “The sensor network’s structure is built on AWS2—a system designed for globalized IoT surveillance. It’s used to monitor everything from shipping containers to smart homes, thermostats, instant ordering refrigerators and even pet food bowls, with fault tolerant readily automated network reconnections. We have no inherent human leverage or room for the idiosyncratic there.”
During the phone interview he said: “Everything is surveilled. What are the implications of living with that as a culture? What are we really enabling?” Then he asked, “But what happens if you try and take control of that? That’s where I feel the artist’s role in technology comes in: We can hack the apparatus and use it to bring humanity back in.”
This makes perfect sense given Winters’ extensive background as a collaborator with acclaimed composers, directors and choreographers in creating both staged and open-ended visual and acoustic media performance environments. In recent years he’s worked with artists such as Francis Ford Coppola, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, choreographer Brenda Way/ODC and pianist Myra Melford.
These first views of a truly innovative art project open a unique opportunity for East Bay arts supporters to be some of the first to see its progress.
Performances: 8pm, Saturday, Jan. 31, followed by discussion and reception. 5pm, Sunday, Feb. 1. followed by discussion. The MilkBar, 241 A S. First St., Richmond. milkbar.org. Project info: domesticlight.art/news/colorofhome.
