In H.P. Lovecraft’s “From Beyond,” the eccentric, intensely imaginative writer describes a machine capable of elucidating the true nature of organic life and, in the process, awakening our “dormant organs” to the material substance of the universe. Upon activation, the electrical machine reveals the thickness of universal space, in which “not one particle was vacant,” saturated with the enmeshed bodies of jellyfish-like, semi-fluid creatures.

That’s more or less how I would imagine a fleet of Kateřina Smolíková‘s Skyphos 1 chandeliers would appear when tethered to the ceiling of a darkened room. The lighting fixture, which bears a striking resemblance to the floating bioluminescent organisms of the undersea, is a web of blown glass tubes and bulbs arranged in a layered volume. Thin strips of tiny LEDs are threaded throughout the body of the chandelier so that when lit, the transmitted  light emanates outward as if filtered through the diaphanous membrane of a jellyfish. Smolíková, who is a student at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, was recently awarded with the Outstanding Student Design Award for her impressive work. Click through to see more.

more