Projection lenses

It is so difficult to get a good picture of the shadows from my projection device. I've decide that the lenses need to be closer to the ceiling so the shadow is in focus. This is shown by the film clip below. I have started to design structures for a free standing lifted structure and a wall mounted adjustable version. 

The beginings of a Projection Device

There are only shelves, no sides and back and doors, but there will be. The jars are for testing the height of gaps between the shelves. But it would be better tested in the dark. So I'm off to the dark room.

The best shadow

This is the most amazing shadow I have seen. Just as I was walking home feeling tired and generally worried about my project and the fact the show was coming around far to fast, I saw this. The tree outside the design department was casting a shadow across the whole field. I was beautiful.  

I have been thinking about my project and how much it has changed since I first defined it. I has become very specific in the casting of shadow by everyday objects, and creating chance for the creativity inorder to create them. I often worry that my project has become about me and my overactive imagination and may be what I have been creating has such a subtle effect it can almost be missed. What I like about my abstract shadow making is that it can be interprited in many different ways. I've always likened this to when people look at clouds, and after a while the mind starts to see images and characteristics.

A while ago I was given the book, A Cloudspotters Guide, and I finally started reading some of it and it immediately made me want to find out more. In fact after looking at the website I made sure I joined the cloud appreciation society group on facebook. For a fairly scientist book it is full of wonderful imagery, includes poems the members of the society had written about the clouds they had looked like.  But as soon as I read this poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'The Cloud', I knew that my project was not just for me and my imagination but all the people with imagination. 

I am the daughter of Earth and Wind; 

And the nursling of the Sky:

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain, when with never a stain

The pavilion of heaven is bare,

And winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams

Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain, 

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, 

I arise, and unbuild it again.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'The Cloud'

Blue Fabric Shadows

Here are some more experiements, which better images of the UV photochromic ink. The fabric turns blue in the sun and a pale green when in the shadow. These are images of objects placed ontop of the fabric, and the video is to show how fast the change is. I have been researching into fixers and want to experiement in fixing the shadow permanently. 

This table is a stage

I have made my first tablecloth as a tool to develop my ideas for the table of shadows, made up of objects on the table. The stage directions are for me to generate ideas and porvoke the feeling of the table becoming a different type of space. 

Different Shelves

Light Sensitive Fabric Tests

I have been experiementing with light sensitive fabric paint in order to test the effect of objects sitting on a window sill and the shapes projected from the curtain to the room. Setacolor is a fabric paint that sets in the sun, a bit like developing a photograph. So the objects on the window sill would prevent the dye setting leaving a white shadow on the fabric. But when the object is removed, over time the colour would fade distorting the image. Unfortunately the method of make this development takes only a few minutes. I tested it by placing a key ring of a london bus over the fabric while still wet. When it dried it left the shadow appearing below.

I also tested the technique by mixing it with binder in order to screen print it onto a large piece of fabric, but this did not work. I think the binder interupted the chemical reaction with the sun.


Another light sensitive fabric dye I tested is UV photochromic pigment. In the sunlight the fabric turns bright blue, but when inside the fabric is a pale green.

I screen printed the dye onto a piece of fabric and tested the sensitivity of placing object in the middle of the piece which when I removed was green shadow of the object.