What exactly are LEDs? Everyone’s favorite web source of collectively-mediated information, Wikipedia, says, “A light-emitting-diode (LED) is a semiconductor diode that emits light when an electric current is applied in the forward direction of the device. The effect is a form of electro-luminescence where incoherent and narrow-spectrum light is emitted from the p-n junction.”

Pop Light. Manufactured by Mathmos.

Does that clear up your questions? If not, how about this? “The wavelength of the light emitted, and therefore its color, depends on the band gap energy of the materials forming the p-n junction.” Let’s see if my layman’s mind can translate: near as I can tell, the great thing about LEDs is that they allow the same source to produce different wavelengths of light, and therefore different colors. They also allow for small and lightweight lights, high light output (per watt of energy), quick light-up times (an advantage over the once-dreaded flourescent-see System X), and rapid cycling. All this explains (I hope) why we see LEDs in all manner of super-cool, ultra-portable innovations-especially those with on-off effects. Have a look at Winter, Twist Together Lamp, Big Easy, Could Outdoor LEDs Have Saved Wall Street, and Corian Illumination. Why, just this week we’ve seen LEDs in Torn Lighting, Krank, Spaghetti Chandelier… My God, they’re everywhere! It seems these little lights let us create nifty illusory sources of illumination-under vanities, behind walls, intertwined with recycled plastic bags…

Now, U.K. manufacturer Mathmos gets in on the action (actually, they’ve been in on it for some time) with their Pop Light series which showed at 100% Design in London last month. As Mathmos says, since 1963, they’ve focused on creating innovative lighting products for the home, working with vaunted designers like Azumi, El Ultimo Grito, and Ross Lovegrove. Pop Light joins the ranks of Krank in regards to human-powered light creation: just push down ever so slightly on the elegant, bell-shaped, mouth-blown glass shade, and the sliver of silver inside that passes for a bulb begins cycling from granny smith green, to aqueous blue, to electric cyan and back again. (There’s also a model in red-blue-violet). Here’s a video animation I was able to locate via Prezzybox.

It’s definitely in the category of neat parlor trick, as it evokes a slightly-skewed festivity-Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas comes to mind. But the overall get-up reminds me of an artificial/created life sort of motif. I’m thinking of any number of Incubi or Succubi, cultivated among the phosphorescent test-tubes of some deranged would-be Frankenstein; or legions of re-constituted organs each in their niche, awaiting the proverbial electric jolt to bring them back to life. But perhaps Pop Light best evokes-Halloween approaches, after all-those dystopian Simpson’s episodes in which cultural luminaries like Martha Stewart or Donald Trump have bought their way to immortality in the form of a glass-encased jabbering head. Give Pop Light a try. Its alchemical illuminations will give you all something to talk about.