Artist Olafur Eliasson has a current exhibit at the Tate Modern in London. He created a small light with an affordable photovoltaic cell with his friend engineer Frederick Ottesen. His essential idea is to bring light to parts of the world who have no access to electricity for lighting their homes by making these lights available at an affordable cost. One in five people live without lighted homes.

The installation at the Tate allows visitors to move within the darkness, creating their own shapes with the small light. The light movements are captured by a video camera and  projected in a main gallery where other visitors could view the creations.

Eliasson’s project is called Little Sun. He creates a composite 3 dimensional image that incorporates the individual creations into a sun, showing how people collaborate to create a new, human created source of light to brighten all reaches of the world.

There’s another video available on the BBC that explains the installation and the inspiration in more detail.

- via Good