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

More shadow installations

Big Shadow is a public installation promoting the Xbox game Blue Dragon in which the viewers shadow becomes a dragon during fights.
The promotion of the game using Big Shadow is based on shadow-play:

"We projected magnified shadows of ordinary people in town and created a system whereby they could play with their own shadows. A person’s shadow is projected as a giant shadow image, which can suddenly change into the shape of a dragon. This creates a new and engaging interactive experience.

A shadow can also be manipulated via the Web while viewing a webcam image. We wanted to provide a fresh experience that links the city and the Internet as well as people and shadows."

Shadows

I would like to make an interactive installation using shadows in some way. I have experienced quite a fiew interactive installations and the ones which I enjoyed the most and were most memorable all used shadows and light in some way.

John Lewis's most recent advert uses shadows, although not interactive it is beautiful aesthetically.

New brief - idea generation

Just recieved the new brief- design for interaction and its got me thinking about some installations I have seen over the past couple of years. There is one in particular which was fanstastic, it was an interactive installation called Shadow monsters by Philip Worthington

The video doesn't do it justice.


Focusing on large scale and tactile interactive experiences that engross and envelope the visitor, Philip Worthington (1977-) created Shadow Monsters, a digital version of the traditional shadow puppet, as part of his degree in Interaction Design from the Royal College of Art.

Through a complex interplay of computer graphic and photographic programming, fantastic monsters materialise from the shadows cast by the hands of participants, reacting to and elaborating on their gestures with sound and animation. Wolf-like creatures, birds and dinosaurs are among the characters that speak and squeak as imaginary mouths open and close.

‘Play’ and ‘playfulness’ are words Worthington frequently uses when describing both his work and his approach to interactive design. As the London-based designer says, “it is a platform for experimentation and a space for the imagination to run wild.” His other projects include a digital version of the traditional toy race car track, an online community graffiti network and a colony of digitalised leaf-cutter ants that mimic the behaviours of actual ants as they forage around an interactive tabletop in search of real objects on the surface.

Worthington’s designs inject spirit and humanity into our increasingly technologically driven society. However, interaction designers today are not only concerned with the expressive and communicative possibilities of new technologies but also with their social and cultural consequences. The vision recognition software Worthington has written for Shadow Monsters could have applications beyond growling wolves and squawking birds to incorporate graphical commands for the physically disabled. While exploring all available avenues for his truly immersive and interactive designs Worthington continues to make existing and emerging technologies more meaningful and relevant to our lives now.

Design futures presentation

IT SHOULD BE RED. Don't know why the slide has changed from red to blue, but it changed colour when I uploaded it so never mind.

I presented my concept to the class on Monday, I was quite nervous but apart from that I felt that it went pretty well. I was pleased with my PowerPoint presentation as I spent a long time preparing the slides, however I would have liked to have made an animation to present , but time was against me.

I really enjoyed seeing all of the other presentations, it was great to see what every had
come up with and how different everyones was.

William Kentridge Exhibition

One of the world’s most influential contemporary artists, Kentridge will exhibit a selection of his work including prints, installations and film, in Brighton this autumn. This will be the first time that most of these works will have been shown in the UK, and will constitute his largest exhibition here to date. Born and resident in Johannesburg, Kentridge produced work that engaged in the struggle against Apartheid. Today, his work continues to infuse political sensitivity into the making of his graphic representations and in his filmic and theatrical productions in a manner that discovers politics in the daily traumas and dramas of human experience.