Saeed Gebaan
SIGNAL MIRAGE
2025 light installation Commissioned for Noor Riyadh 2025 First presented at Noor Riyadh 2025 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Curated by Sarah Almutlaq Photography Courtesy of Noor Riyadh
STATEMENT
Signal Mirage examines the paradox of digital certainty in an age overwhelmed by information. Drawing on fiber-optic communication systems, I turn a familiar symbol of technological progress into an environment where signals no longer deliver clarity but continuously generate distortion. Through light, movement, and sound, the work asks whether this unprecedented flow of information has brought us closer to understanding, or has simply surrounded us with more sophisticated forms of uncertainty.
CONTEXT
This question took hold of me because I see the distortion seeping into everything. We do not lack information today; we are flooded with what we never needed to know painful news reaching us each day from the far ends of the earth, matters we can neither act upon nor claim any part in, alongside incomplete truths, severed stories, and directed narratives presented as the whole picture.
A human being, as I understand it, is made to live within their own surroundings and immediate reach; there they can understand, act, and find some peace. But when the pain of the entire world is poured into their awareness daily, their understanding does not widen so much as their perception is thrown into confusion. Reality comes to seem bleaker than it is, its image distorted in our eyes, and digital contact takes the place of real presence between bodies, until a person grows estranged from their own life.
This is where the work was born. I do not ask whether we have enough information, but rather: what has this flood done to us? And is what we take for clarity in fact a mirage growing ever more refined?
THE WORK
A transparent cylinder, five meters long and thirty centimeters in diameter, carries a spiral of light through it. It looks like an optical cable: a channel conveying information from one end to another.
But the spiral arrives nowhere. It turns, and turns, and does not end.
Inside the cylinder is a concentrated sugar solution, which I boil until it reaches its highest concentration. Sugar is a helical molecule, and so it rotates the plane of polarization of any light passing through it, each wavelength turned by a different angle. Between the source and the eye, a motor turns polarizing filters, and with each rotation certain colors are revealed while others withdraw.
This spiral is neither drawn nor programmed. It is light itself, bending in matter.
As the visitor approaches, the sound wakes: severed voices, electronic interference, fragments of messages that never complete. Nearing the cylinder, the signal grows denser and no clearer.
The mirage is not the light in the cylinder. The mirage is the promise that all of this will lead us to understanding.
SPATIAL EXPERIENCE
Visitors encounter the installation as a luminous structure suspended between sculpture and infrastructure.
From a distance, the spiraling light appears stable and purposeful. As they move closer, subtle shifts in perspective alter the perceived direction, rhythm, and continuity of the internal spiral. At the same time, responsive sound fragments emerge and dissolve, surrounding the visitor with incomplete transmissions and interrupted communication.
Every movement through the space produces a slightly different perceptual experience, so that no single position offers complete visual or auditory certainty. The visitor is thus turned into an active participant, navigating an environment in which meaning remains permanently in motion.
DEVELOPMENT
In this work I do not simulate the flow of a signal; I actually bend light. The transparent cylinder is filled with a concentrated sugar solution, which I boil to reach a high concentration and stabilize with preservatives. Sugar is a helical molecule, and for this reason it is optically active: when polarized light passes through it, the plane of polarization is rotated, and each wavelength is rotated by a different angle.
Between the light source and the eye, I place polarizing filters that a motor turns in a circular motion. With each rotation, certain wavelengths are revealed and others withdraw, generating the chromatic spiral that appears to flow endlessly within the cylinder. None of this spiral is drawn or programmed: it is light itself, bending in matter.
This is the core of the work. What resembles an optical cable transmitting information is in fact light turning within a sugar solution and arriving nowhere. The signal that promises clarity is only a repeated refraction. Programmable LED lighting, sensors responsive to the visitor's approach, and multi-channel audio are layered onto this but the optical illusion itself is no digital simulation; it is a physical phenomenon occurring in real time.
CLOSING STATEMENT
Signal Mirage proposes that the defining condition of the digital age is not the absence of information, but the illusion that information alone can produce certainty. Surrounded by endless signals, we often mistake transmission for understanding. The mirage is not what we fail to see. It is what we believe we already know.
MATERIALS
· Transparent Acrylic Cylinder · Concentrated Sugar Solution (Optically Active) with Preservatives · Rotating Polarizing Filters · Step Motor · Programmable LED Lighting System · Custom Electronic Control System · Interactive Sensors · Multi-Channel Audio · Custom Software · DMX Controller · Raspberry Pi · Steel Structure · Optical Components Dimensions: Cylinder L =500 cm × H=90cm , Diameter =30 cm