LEAD ANGELS: Uranium Glass, Colonialism, and the Radiant Spectres of the Anthropocene (2014)

LLEAD ANGELS is a kinetic and audiovisual installation that transforms radioactive decay into an immersive choreography of light, sound, and movement. Using uranium glass—also known as Vaseline or Great Depression glass—the work confronts the dual nature of radiation as both an aesthetic spectacle and an environmental threat. Its eerie green fluorescence under UV light recalls the deeper histories of uranium extraction, scientific advancement, and colonial violence. 

Uranium mining has long been entangled with imperial expansion, from the Shinkolobwe mine in the Belgian Congo, which supplied material for the Manhattan Project, to ongoing extraction on Indigenous lands in the U.S. and Australia, leaving behind environmental devastation and health crises. Vaseline glass, once a domestic commodity, embodies the hidden presence of nuclear materials in everyday life. LEAD ANGELS refuses to let these histories remain obscured, making uranium’s slow decay both visible and sonically perceptible.

By inviting audience interaction—altering the installation with different radioactive samples—the work transforms passive observation into active engagement, foregrounding radiation as both material and metaphor. LEAD ANGELS reveals the spectral traces of colonial extraction, post-colonial nuclear legacies, and the ongoing challenges of decolonizing environmental knowledge, offering a meditation on human entanglement with the radioactive landscapes of the Anthropocene.

Intro

Our world is changing rapidly. Monitoring our environment and bodies is key to understand our world and ourselves, create awareness and act on it. An inspiration was the invention of the world’s first seismoscope in the Han dynasty. The kinetic and audiovisual installation Lead Angels 1.0 draws attention to human intervention in the environment. The work could be seen as a realization of the Anthropocene.

What

The installation senses the environment by detecting radiation (e.g. Uraninite, cosmic radiation, Uranium salt), and transforms the measurements in a techno-poetic interactive experience of sound, light and movement.

Specific

Uranium glass -also known as Great Depression glass or Vaseline glass- has the particular property of emitting a bright acid lime green when lit with ultraviolet light. [LA1.0] incorporates hand drawn uranium glass rods placed on stepper motors that rotate and light up under controlled UV light flashes based on radioactive alpha particle decay measurements. Moreover, each measurement triggers steps, rotations, directions, different behaviors, UV-flashes and Geiger-clicks. Every kinetic element has a piezo speaker to make individual Geiger-clicks audible. A display shows the Geiger-counts -the half life of the uranium glass-, and by doing so visualizing its own half life or death.

Audience interaction

The audience can change the dynamics of the installation by inserting different radioactive samples.