About the Project
The American Institute for Advanced Light Research is pleased to announce The Nature of the Light Amplified, a research project led by American artist and inventor Mark Warren Jacques.
This project initiates a formal investigation into the role of solar phenomena in the structuring of matter and energy amplification. It explores how energy emitted by the sun may be received, modulated, or encoded through deliberately composed molecular arrangements, raising questions about energetic persistence, memory embedded in form, and resonance.
The research culminates in the presentation of analog structures created through manual layering processes (paintings) and animated photographic structures (film). These experimental surfaces, while rooted in physical science, art and design, also invite phenomenological interpretation. Their configurations are designed not merely for observation, but for interaction with light in a way that suggests energy may be stored or activated through compositional logic and emotional allignment.
What the viewer encounters may at first appear straightforward: matter interacting with light on the surface of a painting or light emitting from a screen. But within this seemingly familiar encounter lies the basis for the project’s deeper investigation: the possibility that a hand-composed arrangement of material, fixed in place, passive to the eye, can behave as an energetic amplification structure. That through the alignment of certain formal decisions with underlying axioms, a painting or film might do more than reflect or emmit light. It might hold it. It might release it unevenly over time. It might even amplify the energy it holds.
From Mark Warren Jacques:
Consider how, when a museum-goer stands before Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night, something happens. Energy is transferred from a silent field of pigment to a living observer, often in the form of wonder, joy, or awe. This transfer of energy has occurred thousands, even millions of times. And yet the energy that initiated it was poured into the surface only once, by one person, in one moment. Van Gogh never lived to witness the scale of its amplification and what he made remains a relatively fixed molecular stack, but its effect has grown asymmetrically. The return seems to exceeded the input.
In this framework, the act of composition becomes a kind of encoding, where energy invested at the moment of making is not merely transferred, but transformed. The asymmetry between energy in and energy out becomes measurable through attention, presence, and the persistence of resonance long after the initial encounter. The works presented here are proposed as such experiments: static or animated surfaces that may, under the right conditions, act as amplifiers.
The compositions developed for this project range in scale and density. Each is a constructed surface depicting the sun, the moon, or transitional forms that suggest both. These are not static illustrations, but calibrated abstractions, arrangements where light, form, and time are allowed to behave. Gradients emerge not only in color but in temporal logic, inviting the viewer to register slow shifts, internal cycles, and perceptual thresholds. Though celestial, the subject is secondary to the inquiry. What matters is not what is pictured, but how the structure, using light as a subject, receives and releases our attention. In this sense, the body of work functions as a metacognitive system: a reflection on the mechanisms of observation and light itself.
About the Researcher / Artist
Mark Warren Jacques is an American artist, author, and inventor whose work explores the intersection of systems thinking, perception, and creative structure. With formal and independent study in art, design, philosophy, physics, and computer science, Jacques’s practice bridges intuitive making and theoretical inquiry.
He has received national recognition across multiple fields and has been awarded major public commissions and research-based fellowships, including grants from the Paul G. Allen Foundation and the Ohio Arts Council.
His work spans physical installations, conceptual writings, and exploratory image-making. It has been exhibited widely in exhibitions across the U.S. and internationally, including at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and Art Basel.
More information about Mark Warren Jacques can be found at:
www.mwj.studio
For inquiries or press:
CONTACT US
www.advancedlight.org