Shadow Canopy

Here is my documentation for the final assignment, to build an intervention/installation that reflected the already existing light quality in that space. Cross-posted in my blog (linked b/c there are larger pictures there.)
My site was a pathway located between two parking lots: the blue lot behind the Space Research Building, and the connecting orange lot. The path is rough concrete and it weaves through the woods. On a bright, sunny day, the light passes through the foliage in a specked pattern on the path- or in the winter, the sun casts long shadows from the bare branches. At night, a row of lamps arranged along the path lights the way. I chose this as a potential site because it’s an often used path, but removed from any sculptural works found in the more central and populated region of campus.There is already a specific light quality in the space, which I could choose to emphasize or draw attention to. I suspect the light is almost never appreciated, however, because the path is most often used by people arriving for work in the morning or leaving work at day’s end.
Placing a canopy above the path catches the shadows of the trees and branches, creating a “shadow screen” overhead. My hope was for the installation to draw attention to these shadows, which otherwise generally go unnoticed.In addition to creating a shadow-screen, I wanted to both convey and toy with the quality of light as it shines through and between leaves in a natural forest canopy. To achieve this, I laser cut a series of acrylic leaves, wove them into a thin net, and suspended them a few inches above the cloth. Light passing through these leaves created familiar and yet surreal shadows spaced among the natural branch shadows. Additionally, the canopy was supported by a branch-like metal structure sewed into the fabric, which then in turn was fastened to four surrounding tree trunks. In this way, the structure was a continuation of the trees reaching out over the path.Below are stitched photographs showing the canopy-as-shadow-screen. Enjoy!

Latest

My camera is temporarily out of commission; I'll pick up some batteries in the morning and post my latest photos. A lot is in the oven right now, but I've completed two studies and learned a good deal about what I want to produce this weekend.

Following this post should be an image I created to illustrate my latest idea. I was experimenting with materials, trying to get a sense of how light would pass through the acrylic and how to cast shadows of text and adjust images to nonparallel surfaces, when I inadvertently created something I found interesting. I want to make it a part of the work, and I feel it relates well to the issues I've been pursuing.

I'm currently calculating angles for my next sunrise experiment and working on planning out my next construction. Once these things are ironed out, I'll have more to post. Be expecting another post tomorrow, once the camera has new batteries, and another to follow either in the evening or Saturday morning once the next model is being constructed.

Cheers

Window, Mirror, Screen: An Installation

I finally worked out all the kinks with my installation piece for Borrowing Light. From broken fluorescent bulbs and getting the right projector to locked doors with alarms and blown out circuits, it was a bit frustrating. But I got there in the end. When I started documenting the piece, I fell in love with individual pictures. So here are two parts of the installation in images and a video of the third part.

My goal was to use a bank of windows as a window, a mirror, and a screen.

This section of the windows is acting as a window. At night you see your own reflection in the window because it's light inside and dark outside. To reverse this, I added light outside so that the wall becomes the focal point of the window scene.

Outside, the window does the opposite, acting as a mirror and shielding the view of the interior. From this angle, the whole panel looks black.

If you get a bit closer to the window, you can make out what is going on both inside and outside--the bricks from outside sit on top of the interior image.

On one section of the windows I used a rear projection (projected from outside onto the back of the glass) to turn the windows into a screen from inside. Note: There is something wrong with the video, I can't get it to load.

In this section of the installation I enhanced the reflective quality of the windows by adding more light. Normally the windows are already reflective indoors, but they are even more effective with the added lights.

From outside there is a very clear view of the interior.

Sun's Path June to December

Precedents for Installation

I can't embed this video, but it's is a time lapse of a building's exterior throughout the day and night as the reflections change.

And this is a video of fireworks reflecting on a building.


Time lapse of buildings.

Precedents for Installation

1 Minute: LAX Night Window, Reflection, Sniff from michaeljohnmuller on Vimeo.

Indoor reflections interacting with an exterior environment.

Video Document of 'within' (A Public Art Installation. Toronto Canada, 2009) from jol thomson on Vimeo.

Rear projected video on building.

TonhalleLATE from Projektil on Vimeo.

"Virtual Windows"

Windows from Dana Kash on Vimeo.

Rear projections through building windows.

Amy Yoes' "Street-level" Night View from Art in General on Vimeo.

Light Installation: Trials

10PM Indoors, 3 lights, Focus: Down

10 PM Indoors, 3 lights, Focus: Down

10PM Indoors, 2 lights, Focus: Side

10PM Indoors, 2 lights, Focus: Out

The upstairs location wasn't working so I moved downstairs and had a lot more success.
Indoors, 2 lights, Focus: Out

Indoors, 2 lights, Focus: Side

Indoors, 2 lights, Focus: In
Least effective method of lighting.

Experience from outside. Reflection is stronger in lit panel, but still present without lights.

Inside vs. Outside
Having the sections side by side isn't as strong of an effect.

Indoors, Fluorescent Light, Straight On

Indoors, Floor light

Indoors, Floor light

Outside

Outside lights from inside

Donna outside with lights filmed from inside.

Inside lights forming an 'L'

The Process of the Canopy

This process has been a little crazy, and a little overwhelming, as I realized that I’m building an entire canopy structure basically within a week. Let’s break it down.

The canopy itself, or “screen” to catch the shadows throughout the day:
Realizing that it wouldn’t be possible to span that large of a distance with a single piece of fabric, I decided to break the design into 3’ wide stripes. I’m alternating between two kinds of white fabric- muslin, and I-forget-the-name-offhand-but-it’s-shiny. The nice thing about alternating is that the difference in appearance is subtle- they’re both white, one just has more sheen than the other- and it lets me save money by using a lot of muslin, which doesn’t look quite as nice but is much cheaper. Having both materials side-by-side will help to highlight the way each one captures the shadows, since they are distinctly different. I’m hoping some shadows will cross both kinds of fabric and make this difference even more obvious. I bought the fabric, and started sewing yesterday, and wow. This is a lot of fabric.

The structure, or “branches”


Originally I was just going to pull the cloth taught between the trees, but this puts a lot of stress on the fabric. Instead, I’m going to create a slightly arching structure by bending metal poles into a branch-like pattern, and sewing the metal poles between layers of fabric.
This will (ideally) support the fabric better, and by using forms that are drawn from the surrounding site, will keep a sense of unity between the project and the site.

The acrylic leaves and net, or “light filters”

I want to mimic the way light passes through leaves, and especially like the effect when light passes through the lasercut leaves and is projected onto the cloth screens. To keep this effect in my canopy, I plan to weave the acrylic leaves through a bird net (should arrive tomorrow, fingers crossed!) and suspend the leaves/net slightly above the canopy, like so:


In this way, I’ll capture both the shadows from the surrounding trees, and the fascinating light patterns through the acrylic leaves. If it turns out the way I hope, it’ll be a strange combination of the familiar/natural and the oddly unnatural.

One last thing- I may have to cut holes in the fabric to keep the wind from ripping it apart, and I was thinking of cutting out holes shaped like tree branches (resembling the structure) but then sewing fishing line across the holes. This would keep the fabric from drooping down, but still allow wind to pass through. What do you think?

Progress

This is when I was playing with the fiber optics in class on Monday. I manipulated the optics so that they would clearly show light all the way through the fiber. This image is when I both shaved and notched the fiber optic. Pretty good results!

This image shows how much light is still traveling completely through the fiber optic, even after being manipulated. Even in a light environment, its still a lot!

This is showing the fiber optic just notched, which in my circumstances, works the best. It gives a really great lineation to the light, and gives me exactly what I want to be able to create some sort of structure with the light still being able to travel completely through the fiber optic while being somewhat bent.

Sorry its so shaky! But this is all of my devices on the pond on Tuesday night, before it was raining! I attached all of them to a line, and the lines got caught so they wouldn't move as far as i wanted them to. I think I will change the string to a fishing line so that they get less tangled and move easier in the water. They are floating in these plastic food containers that seperate the devices from the water, and are clear so that they do not disturb the reflections that I want too greatly.

This shows one individual device by itself. My camera couldn't capture the reflections too well, I have to fiddle with the exposure and such and couldn't quite capture them.

The things I have to fix is the fiber optics staying attached to the light (I was having trouble with that while in this process), and the line that I use to deploy them upon the pond. Otherwise everything looked pretty good, and was successful in terms of the light's interaction with the water's surface.

To be honest I'm not sure who I should be giving credit for this photo, but it was included in a post for an event called "Crossing the Visible" hosted by HOUSE in London.

I like it because it highlights a naturally occurring phenomenon (reflection). The light of the window is cast upon the wall and the floor. We can see the reflection of the window light cast on the wall and the reflection of the light cast upon the wall, on the floor.

The SOMA restaurant/bar by a+i architecture

The entrance to the bar is a progression through a dark space to prepare the viewer's eyes. These irregular perforations allow light to pass through giving the light beams tangibility as they reflect to our eyes off haze and dust floating in the air. I don't necessarily like how it is used in the space, but I like the effect and the possibilities it suggests. Find out more about this project here.

On the same note, I'm looking at Islamic architecture, both past and contemporary works, which make use of a screen. It is the merging of two interests: the tangibility of light in it's reflection and the controlling it's admittance into a space. Here's another light blog worth visiting: click me.

Final Project Precedents

Tadao Ando’s Maritime MuseumThis design is incredibly beautiful, but sadly was never built. Here Ando designs carefully and deliberately with light, considering how it interacts with the form of his building and with the water passing through the building. The rendering is especially revealing, showcasing light’s smooth gradation across the building itself, the reflections of the light on the water, and the shadows cast on the water by the building form. By keeping the form and materials simple, Ando is able to highlight the behavior of light where it otherwise may be overwhelmed by shapes and colors competing for our attention. While I don’t intend to use water in my design, I would like to design my installation in a way that’s as considerate to and interactive with the environment as much as Ando’s design is to his.

More information on the museum's design can be found here: http://desmena.com/?p=68

Kumi Yamashita’s Shadow ArtA link to Kumi Yamashita’s site: http://kumiyamashita.com/

Yamashita creates extraordinary and detailed shadows from ordinary objects. To do this, Kumi has to have a strong working knowledge of the exactly type of light source and its location, the location of every individual object, and the location and material of the screen onto which the shadows are projected. The alterations to the shadow-caster often seem subtle at first, but can create drastic shadow effects.

(untitled work) from Prisoner’s Creative Arts Project

I picked up this drawing from the Prisoner’s Creative Arts Project last year. Unfortunately I was not given the tag with the piece’s title, or the artist’s name, so that information has sadly been lost. Through only a small range of colors, this drawing demonstrates every possible way that light can interact with clouds: shining through them, backlighting them, front lighting them, making them cast shadows, making them glow. The source remains constant, but the position, density, and thickness of the clouds are all different, and thus cause the light to interact differently with them. This work shows how by keeping some parts simple – the color scheme, only using clouds, etc – a wide variety of light interactions can be the entire focus of a piece.

Sunlight Filtered Through Leaves
Canopies of leaves on a sunny day are a direct inspiration for this last project. I have always found it beautiful when the sun lights leaves from behind, rendering them semi-transparent so you can see the veins of the leaf and silhouettes of the leaves and branches behind it. I would like to capture this effect somehow, using sunlight to create some level of transparency in a material, but also capturing the shadows of the leaves and branches above it.

Scott Clark Photography
First, a link to Scott Clark’s photography website: http://scottfoto.blogspot.com/

From what I have seen, Scott Clark does not always make light the focus of his photography (though at times he certainly does) but I feel like the viewer is always made aware of the light conditions nonetheless. The lighting seems to always be deliberate, or well taken into account… the shadows of subjects are framed as carefully as the subjects themselves. In every case I can see, the lighting is natural, be in sunlight or firelight, and the colors are all very vibrant. I would like to be able to create a similar awareness of light and shadow, though perhaps more directly in my project.

Update!!!!! New Improvement on my Idea!!

So I was thinking about how the heck I was going to do my project, and got extremely overwhelmed with all of the technical difficulties that I would encounter on my way, and all of the technicalities that I would have to face. I am no good at that stuff, so I started to think of another way to achieve me goal. I started to think about what other source or presentations of light can I use that still has a linear quality? I thought of Fiber Optics!!!!

I want to construct lots of little mini cubes out of fiber optics, and make them so that they can float on the pond's surface. This would achieve both the linear and graphic presentation that I am looking for, and really EXPOSE THE NATURAL LIGHT OF THE PLACE that I have chosen. Also a sort of movement could come from this, which I am really excited to try out. I picture these tiny little lit cubes floating around and almost drawing disappearing lines all over the pond in the darkness of the night.

I have purchased these tiny powerful light to stick on one end of the fiber optics so that the light can travel through and with the devices I plan to make. Also, I plan to have these light cubes on top of some sort of device that floats and does not interfere with the pond's reflection (i.e. a mirror, clear acrylic, plastic, balloons at each corner..something) The device should be hard to see in the night's darkness from far away (my original vantage point for my viewers), so the little ugliness of the floatation contraptions shouldn't be seen to harshly.

I am extremely excited!!! Please let me know anything that you are thinking, and some possible feedback!!!

Glow Light Screen

Developing the first project to include more material interactions was tricky, since glow liquid is a dim source. I wanted to make sure I continued to emphasize the light as a liquid, so I thought, why not allow the glow liquid to interact with water? The glassblower on central campus cut a smooth dish for me, which I used in doing a few tests of water/glow-liquid interaction, which you can see below:

The glow liquid and the water remain separate, much like oil and water. I'd hoped the dripping glow liquid splashing into the water would cause waves of light and shadow, but the effect was too subtle to see in person, much less in video form. For that reason I decided to include a screen of some kind- ideally white, to pick up the bright colors of the glue liquid- which could then perhaps cast shadows onto the floor.
To this end I cut a series of circles out of a piece of white museum board, and then folded the corners of the board upward. This way, the circle cutouts closest and flattest to the ground would have sharp, circular shadows, and the circle cutouts raised off the ground would be distorted and fuzzy ellipses. One effect that also happened, which I had not considered, was the effect of the light source moving far away from the screen (the "compact fluorescent bulb") to close to the screen (inside the bowl of water.) When the light source was far away, the shadows were clear, but as the light source dripped and moved lower, the shadows became fuzzy and less defined.


Time and change were still important factors with the screen, as they were before. One particularly neat suggestion that was brought up in class was replacing the screen with a mirror, which could operate as a surface for the glow liquid to splatter onto, as well as doubling the appearance of light and depth through its reflections.

Here's the stop-motion movie of the dripping glow liquid, which I showed in class on Monday:

Precedents for Assignment 5

At first, I was a little overwhelmed with the parameters of this project. Over the progress of my brainstorming, I've been thinking a little bit about what I want to do and the work that's giving me inspiration, and perhaps some of the other things that have helped in my thought process too.

First, I've been thinking a lot about Jenny Holzer's work, especially her projections on large scale on water fronts.

One site that I was thinking about using was the Music School Pond, and perhaps if we have our critique at night, I could do something dealing with the water's opaqueness and fluidity at night to affect the light.

Another thing I've been thinking about is building some sort of space with light in a linear form--using the natural linear direction of light to construct a space.

I couldn't find anyone who's done anything similar before. I'm not saying that this has never been done before, but just that I couldn't find anyone in particular as a precedent.

What I was thinking was to somehow construct a space or possibly a design hovering slightly above the music school pond, so that it is present both above and "below" the water (by this I mean that the combination of the water's natural movement and the reflective properties may give the effect that it is "below" the water's surface).

This is all I have for now, and come next monday I will have sketches of precisely what I want to do, or attempt to do, and accompany these ideas with the architectural/precise drawings that you guys were looking for.

The Course of Things

In the beginning:

My interest is in sunrise so I've begun to break down the project into parts to be tackled separately and then brought together.

Here are the bits so far, beginning with dawn, the time just before the sun breaks the horizon. To help explain, here are some notes I've been working on.

The qualities of light in the early morning, as we perceive them, are due in large part to the sun's position relative to the horizon and the amount of atmosphere that the light must travel through.

Like water, the atmosphere "bends" the light or refracts it because it changes speeds (ever so slightly) between mediums (vacuum of space > air). Not only does this cause us to see the sun before it has actually reached the horizon, but it also causes it to change shape - but again only slightly, and it isn't normally observable.

The diagram above describes my intent with this portion of the work. I want to recreate the affects of refraction. My hopes are that the apparatus will manipulate perceptions of time and refract the light, mimicking the natural sunrise.

Another aspect is color. The colors of sunrise are also caused by the amount of atmosphere the sun must travel through before it reaches our eyes. The red and orange colors we see are caused by particles in the air which scatter the other wavelengths [colors]. Predictably with my work I've found that the color of light transmitted through the acrylic, when it is used as the transient medium, changes depending on the amount of material the light must pass through.

p.s. there are spelling mistakes in my notes - sorry.