Israeli designer Tomer Sapir has launched his new website, including images of his Prosthesis lights which incorporate illuminated fallen leaves.

Sapir wants the lighting to draw attention to the moment between life and death; the leaves are briefly illuminated after the leaf is detached from the tree but before it dries and crumbles away.

Here’s an explanation from Sapir written by Avi Lubin:

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The displayed objects create a grey area in which cultural life is created and destroyed at one and the same time. This involvement in grey areas has been present in much of Tomer’s work.

In the current work Tomer uses autumn leaves, which have been gathered from the ground before drying out and crumbling. These leaves are in a state of suspended life after the cessation of all essential functions, in a grey area between life and death.

The light, which functions both as a physical material and a metaphysical entity, exposes the veins and the pigments of the leaves and thus appears to kindle life in them and to restore the leaves’ “natural” function by attaching them to the constructions.

Yet the light also has the complete opposite effect. Under this light nothing “natural” remains and the effect of this resuscitation clarifies that this is an artificial resuscitation. The moment of quickening announces its demise.

The failure of the bond with the construction to restore the leaves’ “natural” function generates a feeling that we are dealing with the connection between an artificial prosthesis and a living body. However, this is an illusion, since it is hard to decide what is the body and what is the prosthesis, what is living and what is artificial.

In fact, the blurring of this boundary creates / reveals the illusion of a binary separation and discloses that the relation between both parts is dialectic.