A winged world spirit would deem it a paradox, if not even irony: In a time of constantly accessible information and uniquely comprehensive knowledge people seems to have lost their capacity to wonder. It seems that with every step we place into a wondrous and unfathomable world, something of the mystery that brings us to life as human beings is irretrievably lost. When Martin Heidegger set down the wisdom that the things ontically nearest and most familiar to us are simultaneously the things ontologically most distant, most unknown and overseen by us he put the case for a long-lost phenomenology of amazement. The things most common escape our attention. It is said to be the task of art to make us encounter the seemingly familiar in such a way again that we experience the world not differently, but entirely anew; that we may marvel at it, feel it and taste it again.
Light may count among the things most familiar to us. Luckily, there are artists like Martin Hesselmeier who may remind us by way of his reactive light installations that it is worth observing things closely – most of all if one thinks that one has seen it all.