Interactive shadow installation idea

Playing with Scale: small objects are placed in the centre of a room, lights projected onto the objects create large shadows around the room.

When an object is touched its projected shadow changes in someway (comes to life), which sets off a sensor which triggers a light which will project onto the viewer making there shadows enlarged and become part of the installation.

The viewer can interact with the shadows using there own shadows, when the viewers shadow touches an objects shadow, the shadow will change again.

Viewers interact and create change in the artwork by physically touching the physical object and interacting using there physical shadows to virtual shadows.

There are three particular things that have inspired me and driven me towards my idea.

Christian Boltanski's Les Ombres

Tiny figures hung in the centre of the space, suspended from a wire structure and lit gently at floor level. The images were projected onto surrounding walls, where they appeared as surreal and macabre shadows.



"Shadows are essentially early photographs" (Christian Boltanski)

Samuel Van Hoogstraten: Shadow Games



Minim++ - Tools Life
When useful physical objects are touched, their shadow-like silhouettes magically begin to move and can assume a wide variety of forms. The objects themselves do not change their shape, whereas there shadows reveal there true character or secret wishes. I experienced this interactive installation first hand at Sonar Festival Barcelona 2007, It was very impressive and alot of fun too.



Geraldine Pilgrim : Dreams of a Winter Night
Site specific installation which allude to the dreams of a young girl the night before her coming out party.
This installation has inspired me to look into dreams of young children and triggered some ideas for objects which may be used in my installation.

Observing Systems - Art from a Systems- Theoretical Perspective

I found the essay quite hard to read at first, the wording was realy difficult and I found it quite tireing. Dan went through the text with us and I found it very helpful and began to get an idea of what the essay was about. Dan explained some of the wording and the essay its self made alot of sense once it was explained. I am going to continue to look at systems theory in more detail, as I found it realy interesting. I will look at how systems work and what systems I will be using whilst creating my current project, which is design for interaction.

Some interesting points from the text
Ghetto-isation - a seperation from everything else
Systems Theory applies to everything
De-materialisation of an art object (Theres lots of ways we can consume culture, its not just one way eg Big Brother. Theres 24hr television, News bulletins,teletext , internet)ect.
Inter-media
Renaissance = re-birth of classical values
Cybernetics
Quontum physics