Stéphanie Roland Invites Us to Remember the Disappeared Through Light, AI, and Caustics
Outraged by the violence of military regimes and their systematic erasure of opposition, artist Stéphanie Roland has created a contemplative installation using Rayform’s unique light-shaping technology. Drawing from a global database of missing persons, she employed artificial intelligence to reconstruct haunting portraits—synthesized from the latent space of their original images. These spectral faces are embedded into six precision-engineered Rayform lenses, which appear blank until illuminated. When struck by a beam of light, the lenses project ghostly visages onto a nearby wall using the caustic effect, transforming absence into a fragile form of presence.
“The portraits were secretly inscribed on the lenses, which appear to be devoid of images until they are illuminated by direct light.“
The video below captures the installation in motion, evoking the uncanny tension between visibility and erasure. Viewers are left with a visceral reminder of those who vanished without a trace—recalled momentarily through the interplay of light and memory. Roland’s work, powered by Rayform, becomes a quiet act of resistance against forgetting.