Installations, Language Systems, and Spaces of Spectral Meaning
Introduction
Luminous Opera is an ongoing body of work by Kalman Pool that explores the intersection of invented language, light, and immersive spatial experience. Rooted in speculative semiotics and inspired by East Asian writing systems, Buddhist grotto murals, and digital environments, these installations transform walls, inflatable surfaces, and virtual space into living scripts. Each character, glowing under UV light, becomes part of an evolving fiction—a cosmology that breathes, mutates, and surrounds the viewer.
Concept
This project began with a desire to write beyond the limitations of language. The glyphs of Luminous Opera are not bound to phonetics or syntax. They are gestures of breath, rhythm, and presence—glyphs that float between drawing and writing, between myth and memory. Rendered in Luminous Opera fluorescent acrylic, they exist as acts of devotion, hallucination, and communication.
Much like the murals of the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, these glowing inscriptions invite slow reading, embodied movement, and imaginative interpretation. In a post-human, post-text future, Luminous Opera offers a sensory language that can only be experienced through immersion.
The Language System
Each symbol within Luminous Operacarries its own internal pulse. There is no fixed alphabet, but rather an ecosystem of characters that evolve across contexts and environments. Some are drawn from Chinese radicals or Sogdian curves. Others emerge purely from intuition and embodied gesture. As Kalman writes, “I do not write to be understood, but to activate.”
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Luminous Opera is not just a visual system—it is a way of sensing. A soft, luminous cosmology that invites the viewer into a space where meaning flickers, dissolves, and reforms through light and breath.
This is not a translation. It is a transmission.
Spectral Opera
7x3.3x2.8m Fluorescent pigment, polyester fiber, PVC inflatable, UV light, sound system T2M Artist Residency by áunn museum & fibre shanghai April 2025 - June 2025 Luminous Opera: The Odyssey 12x5x5.5m Fluorescent acrylic, polyester fiber, LED blacklight, sound system 30 April 2023 - 30 June 2023 Jupiter Museum of Art installation sound Time-lapse video | Luminous Opera:Liminal Odysseys at Jupiter Museum of Art, 2023 Voyage 20x7x4.4m Inflatable TPU, flame-retardant fiber canvas, fluorescent acrylic, LED UV light, chip-programmed spotlight (1.5-minute light loop), sound system, aluminum frame Commissioned by: Balloon Museum, London, UK 27 December 2023 - 2025 (Ongoing)
installation sound
Project Page Luminous Opera: Egyselabadi
16x5x4.4m
Fluorescent acrylic, polyester fiber, LED blacklight, audio player, PVC inflatable installation
Haihui Museum of Modern Art, China 23 September 2022 - 3 Jan 2023
Under Heaven II: Luminous Opera 9x6x4m
fluorescent acrylic, pvc inflatable, LED blacklight, polyester fiber, audio player
Coutts Art Center, Shanghai 30 October - 20 December, 2020 Under Heaven 3.5x3.5x1.9m
fluorescent acrylic, pvc inflatable, LED blacklight, polyester fiber, audio player Chicago, US April 2016 Elegy 7351
variable dimensions
fluorescent acrylic, ceramics, polyester, black light tubes
2018An Extract from "Under Heaven"
10x10x1.5cm fluorescent E. coli (living bacterial)
2017