For a non-point source of light, the shadow is divided into the umbra and penumbra. The wider the light source, the more blurred the shadow.
If there are multiple light sources there are multiple shadows, with overlapping parts darker, or a combination of colors.
Hand gestures with multiple overhead light sources.
Shadow Maps
A shadow map is a depth map rendered from the point of view of the light source. Its performance is not directly dependent on the complexity of the shadowing object. It is essentially a technique involving the transformation of distances from one viewpoint, that of the viewer, to distances from another viewpoint, that of the light source.
Parameters to study Shadows:
- Distance of the shadow from the viewpoint.
- Motion of the shadow
- Location of the shadow in the viewer’s peripheral vision
- Extent or area of the light source
- Relative distance of the occluder from the light source and the shadow projection plane.
- Nature of the surface on which the shadow is being cast upon and its angle to the
incident rays of light.
We often think of things in terms of polar opposites like: strong/weak, fast/slow, and light/heavy. Shadows as simply a lack of light.
Light is nothing without shadows. Shadows are an entity as alive as the light.
It is the shadows that draw attention to the light and that integrate with the light to produce striking results.
Shadows contribute to the realism of a scene. Shadows result in improvement in the accuracy of positional perception and size perception of objects in a scene. Meaney, D. O'Sullivan, C
Creation of a shadow constitutes the origin of place and the interplay between the place of shadows and the openness of light forms a dialectics of memory. The shadow plays an important role in demarcating territory. Shadowed place eventually gives rise to the clarity of light. It makes us think of the formation of a dialectic between presence/absence, inside/out, and process/stasis. The movement of shadows carries with it the movement of place. As a result, places are created which have been marked by the movement of shadows in time. Sverre Fehn
Beyond the Shadows
Those transitory feelings, unreal phantasms, frolicking at the margins of perception. Those fleeting moments, hard to capture. Those rushing thoughts, beyond the silence of shadows, protecting the chiaroscuro with their wings. Giving life to the penumbra, revealing the concealment, removing the umbrage, the obscurity.
Bringing the dusk into the light of a new dawn.
A shadow occurs through the gesture of disjunction. The spectrality of the shadow is thus precisely the appearance of distance.
Otherness makes an appearance by diverging from the sense-perception of the un-shadowed present.
If a shadow is also its double, so invoking an inherently temporal dimension, then it deserves to be held apart from the perception of light.
Void and presence entwine, allowing the body to be surrounded by a place with attributes distinct from the outside.
To Dress a Shadow, Julio Cortázar
The hardest thing is to surround it, to fix its limit where it fades into the penumbra along its edge. To choose it from among the others, to separate it from the light that all shadows secretly, dangerously, breathe.
In the Praise of the Shadows : Juni’chiro Tanazaki
“In making for ourselves a place to live, we first spread a parasol to throw a shadow on the earth, and in the pale light of the shadow we put together a house”. The framing of place thanks to light thus serves to enforce a scene of visibility, even when that content of that vision is missing. As such, light gives form, and so pre-empts our navigation into and from place.
Cold Dot Matter: Cornelia Parker
“Material universe exists but you can’t see and experience everything that exist in the very form that it exists”.
Jorge Orteiza
Orteiza’s work is an attempt to find the void in the sculpture and an experiment in disoccupying the space at the same time, a way to define a space without really doing so.
The absence of God is no longer a closure: it is the opening up to the infinite. ‘The absence of God is greater and more divine than the God (in the process I am no longer myself but an absence of self)’ .
Authour Bataille’s words on Orteiza’s work:
“Art concludes as it began, but in reverse. Things conclude as they began, but changing what was initially speech and expressiveness for what is later silence and receptive. The starting technique is by spatial occupation. The artist leans on the space and puts things in it. But at the end what the artist does is dissoccupy the space, take things out of it, represents the more temporal and subjective aspects of things, that which time has worked and left in mankind and in reality.”
Yumi Kori: House of shadows
'Shadows eclipse the materiality of architecture… Shadows erode architecture.”
Light and shadow imply the passage of time, induce human activities, and deconstruct and construct space. Kori deems light a medium for transcending the measurable world to a sensual, visceral, and subliminal experience.
Calibrator :
My main concerns :
1 What would the calibrator be like?
2 How will it incorporate all the aspects that I have read and found interesting?
3 How do I relate my readings and study of shadows to the site?
4 How do I challenge the conventional notion of shadows?
5 Can I design something that is interactive?
6 In what way do I combine the physical and virtual worlds?
Proposed Calibrator:
This calibrator is an attempt to challenge the conventional notion of ‘Shadows’,a revealing one rather than the dark,obscuring conventional notion.
It aims at working reverse of the conventional notion of the shadow.
Designing an installation/system that would enable the user to experience two different worlds simultaneously: the real and the virtual world.
The installation is very user friendly and is an experiment to evaluate the interaction between :
1 The physical human body.
2 Extension of the human body in the form of the shadow.
3 The digital inputs which are virtual.
The resultant integrated, hybrid and interactive space that would result from the union of the real physical world: the viewer & his shadow and the digital virtual world is something that interests me.
THOUGHT: Interpretation of this set of images could be: Mapping of the urban landscape as a flat/two dimensional unwrap of the urban imagery on the human body. This relates to the first skin of the human body- the first impression of the urban setting……on the human mind.
The urban imagery over the period of time governs and influences factors like the social category/status of the humans ………like the kind of clothes the human wears….whether it is a simple and cheap cardigan or an expensive suit or a sports jacket, etc depending on the financial capability, independent liking and appropriateness of the situation.
Another thought that comes to my mind is that in an urban setting where there are millions of other people with you and where the same kind of market forces and dynamism of the urban environment operate irrespective of the location in the world….. the value and importance of the individual is diminishing day by day and one tends to lose his/her own individuality and seldom needs the aid of the second skin….the clothes he/she wears, the cars one drives, the restaurant one dines, the liquor one consumes, etc to project an image and to make an identity for oneself.
(this is the second skin- an extension of the human body).
The idea of inverting the concept of light and shadow could be read as follows:
In the rural/farming communities or in the old times the human was an important and was in direct control of the things which he/she would do and how they would be done. But over the period of time the same human in an urban setting has lost his importance and the urban setting has proved to be more important and the importance of the individual is constantly diminishing.
A direct understanding of this is:- earlier humans were important and his/her actions were affecting and influencing the surrounding environment and it was the human who would decide how to act and interact with his surroundings (conventional notion of an object casting a shadow)
But after inversion of this, what has remained and holds true today is that the urban setting/environment is far too influential and governs the behavioral pattern and the way individuals act. (shadow reveals unlike the conventional darkening/obscuring shadows).
No comments:
Post a Comment