There is no white, no colour, without darkness. You see light after you touch darkness. Without darkness, there is no light.

​

We want to create an open-ended experience, that is white, but also colourful, that could be interpreted in many different ways depending on the lived experience and background of the audience. Everyone feels different about living, and dying, and what it means to be truly alive, and what it takes to accept death.

​

White is 'achromatic', and it's debatable whether it IS a colour. White is perceivable, as perceivable as darkness, as any colour. White is a tabula rasa - a blank slate, as it is the synthesis of all. White is when the brightest of bright is seen, is when all light wavelengths reflect off, is when all colours of light convene.

​

White is everything, just as it is nothing. White is all, and white is none. White is birth, what a newborn sees; white is death, what has been said to represent heaven, the spirit, and sometimes death itself. White is funeral garlands, ribbons, headbands, and lanterns marching in rows, for white is what death orders the Chinese people to dress in and decorate with, and even the funeral matters are called 白事, or the White Matters.

 

White is like life. Small space, lying supine, a lifetime before your eyes. Start with white, an embryo, encompassed within the womb, the cloth, the cradle. End with white, a body, encased within the coffin, buried six feet under.

​

What is life, what is life but an ideal, an ideal of experiences, a length of time of colours. What is white, what is white but an ideal, a lack of colours, an amalgamation of all colours, of light, of perfection. An ideal life is like white; it doesn't exist, but exists within every mind, different, but ideal.

​

White is fragile, and obscure, for there is no true white, for when the slightest bit of chroma is added, the white is no longer white. It is so easily tainted, manipulated, changed. But in this ideal scenario, white exists. And it doesn’t just exist, it persists. No colour or hue could alter the white for good; it ends with the same purity that it had at the very beginning. Death is just as white as birth; begins with nothing and ends with nothing.

 

We wish to use white, and its interactions with other colours and light sources, to delineate the decision-making and possibilities in one’s lifetime. We created a small space that formally resembles an eggshell, with a hard exterior and a soft interior, in which the audience may lie down. The action and position of lying down mirror the posture we were in in the uterus, as well as the placement of the bodies in coffins, etc. The white light represents the audience themselves, so the adventure and transformation of the white light during the experience echo back to the metamorphosis of a person throughout their lifetime.

​

Accompanied by the heartbeat sounds, the LED light sources would pulse, as well as proceed with varying brightness and speed. The initial light source would be bright and pulsing with the vitality of a young child, and as the tree of life branches out and reaches middle age, the light would be dimmed, and move slower, which signifies the inevitable passage towards death. The heartbeat would eventually flatline as the lights go off, for the end has come.

​

When each branch of the tree reaches its own destination, the short passage leading to death would diminish, even though the final point would remain on. Through this gesture, we wish to convey that even though death is unavoidable, the individual could be remembered and commemorated by a few, or some, or even many.

 

When the very last branch reaches its end, all lights would be turned off. Then, without any warning, all lights, including the once diminished death routes that had been cut short, as well as all the branches and final destinations, would turn on simultaneously, creating a spectacle reminiscent of a constellation or a meteor shower.

​

Although all the light sources are white, when they are shrouded with a thin white fabric, it would seem like there are many rainbow coloured projections shown on the membrane, which again harkens back to the notion that white is all encompassing.

​

We wish to use 'white' as a means to narrate, 'colours' as a guide, to portray life and death, and anything and everything in between. But contrary to popular belief, white is far from 'pure'. It is complex, paradoxical, and as all-encompassing as it is alienating. White is like life. There will be people, friends and foes and passers-by, events, tragedies and comedies and anaesthetic happenings for which you don't feel a thing, highs and lows and plateaus on which you look up and down but are unable to move. But at the end of the days, just like the beginning of the days, we would be once again in the embrace of whiteness. It doesn't matter if the life was long or short, in good health or tormented by ailments, colourful or drab, 'all we are is dust in the wind'.

​

Among the endless decisions you make, you never know which one would guide you down this path on which you are currently treading, which one would push you past the point of no return, which one would cut your journey short and send Death to lead you by the hand of which might be extending or withdrawing. You never see past what you know, never know that you are one single sparkle of light in a colossal map of life, growing, branching off, colourful and unpredictable. All unpredictable until the end, where everything is terminated, everything is white.