Manfred Erjautz
ME/WE, 2002

Neon systems, aluminum, acrylic glass, spotlight, steel wiring
Installation height of spotlight: approx. 700 cm


In Manfred Erjautz's ME/WE, a neon lamp in the shape of the artist's initials, ME, hangs face-down from the ceiling. The brightly lit sign reflects a muted WE on the surface below, questioning the relationship between community and ego.

More explicitly, the optical properties of ME/WE produce inherently separate experiences for each viewer. As Erjautz explains, "What we see and how we see, is governed by an almost completely subjective process. Every human being has its own and individually formed sensitivity curve for the visual perception of light and colours under bright light conditions and another differently formed curve for perception under low light level. And the only way to communicate to each other about the seen is via the exchange of pictures and words. The "normalized eye", a statistical average of sensitivity testings from a number of persons, provides a sort of minimal agreement as a base for the subjective photometry (*). The human eye is little sensitive for deep blue light (400-450 nm) and deep red light (650-700 nm), whereas the highest sensitivity is located at green light of a wavelength around 555 nm. If an object of deep blue colour and another one of deep red colour should appear equal bright as a green one, these objects have to be illuminated by a light source with strongly enhanced intensities in the deep blue and deep red. If we now start with only one light source and by using photonic effects, where light is interacting with itself, we can engineer the colour distribution and enhance the intensity of light at a given colour at one position in the space, which requires that there must be at least one other position in the same space, where the light intensity of the same colour is reduced.

"Two or more observers, which are positioned at different places in that space, will see the same objects in different colours but still exactly in the same light. If we now drag the light source itself in the focus of our visual perception, it has to overtake all functionalities like light and colour structuring and light and colour distribution - and so transforming itself into its own light space. This light space is at the same time a projection in itself and is instantaneously outshining its own structure and thereby enlightening the inversion of itself and the surrounding space." – Ch. Sterken, J. Manfroid: Astronomical Photometry A Guide. Kluwer Dordrecht (1992)

*1966 in Graz, Austria | Living and working in Vienna, Austria