RGBeam

RGBeam consists of red, green and blue plastic stretch-wrap stretched sequentially between the building’s beams.

Ben Colebrook lives with his wife and daughter in New York City and upstate New York, where he reflects on culture and nature by the simplest means necessary.

From our contemporary perspective, the Flour Mill, stripped of its original function, feels so distant from our nascent digital age. It represents a beautifully crafted effort, unpretentious solidity and physical human effort. The Flour Mill’s massive beams are here juxtaposed with low-tech attempt at creating video screen/projector light.

Rolls of red, green and blue stretch-wrap, an industrial packaging material, are deployed and layered to create a subtle shift in color and glassy reflective qualities. The deep shadows resulting from the thrifty paucity of windows amplify the plastic’s qualities, transforming the ordinary material into an ephemeral ‘beam of light’. The re-purposing of the industrial plastic is like an inexpensive emulation of digital video reproduction and as it fails in its realism, so the typical simulacra, remains authentic.