Linden How
I
A prism is an object whose function requires that it be placed between things. It can be made of glass, plastic, water. It must have at least three sides, but can have many more. In its simplest form, it relies on an unparallel, unperpendicular relationship between at least two of its sides. This configuration, either singular or multiplied, allows the prism to perform its task: the refraction of light.
As light enters the prism, its travel is slowed and it begins to break apart. If you think of the light as runners on a track, evenly abreast and running at the same speed, imagine when they hit a curve. The runner at the outermost edge has the farthest to travel, and will therefore lag the farthest behind the other runners. In this new order, they come to another curve, separating each runner further apart from the others. As they enter the straightaway, now running at their normal speed, but the even band broken, the runners scatter. In the same way, a white beam of light is separated in two steps into its components: the different wavelengths, or colors, that make up the totality of white. In a scientific illustration, the separate colors disperse evenly on the other side of a triangular prism. When more facets are added to the prism, the dispersion is complicated.
Prisms also reflect light. When light reaches a boundary between two transparent substances, such as glass and air, it can, under certain conditions, be reflected instead of crossing the boundary. This effect, called total internal reflection, is due to refraction and depends on the angle at which the light strikes the boundary. Because of the shape of a prism, light that enters it may be reflected several times before emerging from the glass. Total internal reflection allows prisms to be used as mirrors in such instruments as periscopes.
The prism becomes a medium through which light changes direction. In the operation of refraction and reflection, we can identify two distinct bodies: the ray of light, and the prism. The relationship and result depend on the positioning of these two parties. In the case of refraction, we can add a third party to the equation: the wall or surface against which the light refracts on the other side of the prism.
A two-party arrangement is the most basic system of exchange: there is the source, and the receiver. The ray, the word, the image, the glance, must travel through the space between to reach the wall, the ear, the eye. When speaking to another person, we imagine our words traveling along like a ray of light: clear and linear, reaching the listener’s ear unfettered and unchanged, illuminating the exact spot we directed it at. Of course, we know, this is not really the case. Any number of forces intervene between the speaker and listener: space, time, context, tone, remembrance, forgetting, and all the associations we carry around with us. In that space, the trajectory of the message becomes fractured, grows strange new appendages.
The same applies to images. As with speech, the initial meaning (that which the image-maker determines) may be complex, or even self-negating. Nevertheless, there is an intention, directed outward towards the viewer, through the screen of the image. In her essay “The Aesthetics of Silence,” Susan Sontag argues that this mediacy that exists between artist and viewer or external world: the mediacy that is the artwork, is a curse. But if this mediacy is what allows refraction to occur, doesn’t the mediate object allow meaning to scatter and proliferate? The prism of subjectivity, of image, makes meaning bend, and in doing so, extends it in unforeseen directions.
II
Water can be the space between, can be a prismatic thing. It diverts the path of objects and looks that enter it, does strange things to the bodies of those immersed in it. Think of how the riverbed looks underneath the current: the edges of rocks wobble, and become sinuous. Think of the reflection of your face, an image of yourself looking back as if from a mirror, but a strange and faulty mirror. Your edges ripple away, your body tumbles and dissolves. The effect is vertiginous.
Narcissus learned this: when it comes to the prismatic tendencies of water, simple reflection and refraction loosen and distortion takes hold. The water has no reason to be faithful to your form. The swimmer’s body, seen from above the surface, becomes boneless, fluid, is magnified here and miniaturized there. The body reverberates through the water, water reverberates through the body, the body is glittering and serpentine. Its edges, once clear, are suddenly questionable. Below the surface, the sound of the air above hums. Any speech underneath is deadened by the press of water against the mouth. The voice breaks apart.
What the prism does is open – and then magnify – the fissures that are already replete in the message. Its disruptive nature reveals something about the speaker and the maker, really, a kind of frailty. While its agency becomes apparent in this exchange, it continues to rely, nonetheless, on the source of the message.
What becomes clear in the prismatic tendencies of the space between speaker and listener, or artist and viewer, is that subject and object do not preexist as such, but emerge through interactions. Refractions cause each side to be created in the exchange, broken down and built anew in each subsequent moment, image, or word. The stability of knowing is continually disrupted. This untethering of meaning is an illumination, a vitality given to something which would otherwise be static, resigned to only a certain time and place. Through the prism, the transmission of meaning, through words, and images, can become boundless.
The light and the message move in waves, like sadness. They can’t be repeated, there is no established interval at which they are sent, or place where they come from. They fall into themselves, overlapping, lapsing, heaving again in new sighs and signs. They collide with the shores of intention and reception, washing back.
What voice can you use when speaking into the prism, what images can you make, and how could you ever imagine what the words and forms will look like on the other side? They will scintillate, and then splinter, scattering in gorgeous, soft shapes against the far wall. When white splits and becomes blue, green, red, yellow spots. Dreams as well as doorknobs. They both exceed, and fall short of, what you had in mind. It is a constant surprise, what emerges on the other side.
III
I will remember, alternately, that the last time I saw you, you seemed sad, or fine.
Within that night, a second and third night, maybe more.
I will remember a fast drive in a new car, an admission that we both enjoyed the same pop song.
You talked about the Bible and tomatoes.
In the picture I took of you, you seem calm, or tumbling.
Tumbling away, or tumbling home.
Darkness envelops half of your face. I did not know then that it would take all of it, or that maybe, it already had.
I will wonder if you remember it as a goodbye, and if, in the way you said it, you knew that the meaning wouldn’t reach me at that moment, but would cast itself, here and there, occasionally, into the future.
I will wonder what our bodies now mean to each other,
one on the shore, and one in the waves.
From here, I can only catch the reminder of your shape every once in a while,
floating as it is somewhere beneath the water.
Linden How is a Portland, Oregon based artist and writer whose work addresses the separations and connections between words and images. She received her MFA in Visual Studies from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2013. More information can be found at lindenhow.com.