Tripping the Light Fantastic

While I enjoy breaking loose and busting a move on the dance floor, looking completely and utterly ridiculous lost in my own little world, this article is about phrases. Or more specifically, phrases you may or may not have ever heard. One such phrase that changes meaning then escapes meaning is "tripping the light fantastic". Back in the day, no need to date your self, variations go back farther than any one reading this, "tripping the light fantastic" used to mean dancing in a correct or expert way. For a brief time it had an association with taking drugs (tripping). Then the other day I asked my wife what she thought it meant, to which she replied, "Someone tripped and turned on the lights in a fantastic manner".

It is the interpretation of phrases that we may or may not know that inspires some of our art. "The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree", "Pot calling the Kettle Black", and "getting lost in the shuffle" are all phrases that may or may not make sense to someone hearing them for the first time. For many phrases to peruse through I can recommend http://phrases.shu.ac.uk/index.html.

But stepping back to the tripping, I knew that this phrase had to do with dancing, maybe from simply reading a lot as a youth, or perhaps my parents mentioned it offhand, or I saw it in a movie, I don't remember. I wanted, however, to rethink this phrase in a different manner, with light. My light program of choice is of course POV. So I set about thinking of a situation in which light would get bounced around in a great and various way so that the light could be interpreted as dancing. In my mind I pictured a mirrored room but I curved a couple of the mirrors for a bit of interest. In the center of the room I placed a sphere with a few openings and a light inside so that the light would emanate from the sphere and bounce out and around the room.

There are numerous ways in which this idea can occur. The light sphere can be placed in several places in the room other than direct center. Different colored lights can be used and biomorphic forms can be the landscape. In the end I chose to open the room up a little and simplify the image back into what you see. But playing with light in a virtual environment is surely "tripping the light fantastic".

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