On/Off - Illustrated

Le vacuum forming!

Table Shadows

OnOff version 2

Bio: Shadowed Shade from On/Off

The Shadowed Shade came from a series of models made for my On/Off animation, showing the potential for a shadow device to project around the room. I played with vacuum forming different shadows to form a shelf like space to put objects into the shadowed animation space. The On/Off film was a piece to demonstrate my process of modelling, and experimenting with the idea of interventions in front of light sources in order to encourage anthropomorphic animation.
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The On/Off film was a piece to demonstrate my process of modelling. This process involved analysing different kinds of shadows, shapes, and the effects of interaction between these. With on of the models, during the filming I felt the urge to move a coin that was placed inside it. This model has turned into the prototyped outcome shaded shade. The device has a place to store objects around the lamp, creating a space for play and animation. The rim around the lamp is a circular stage for shadow play.

Bio: Projection Devices

These objects work on the idea of the building up shadows to create a space for animation in the shadows projection on the ceiling. The object encourages the user to interact with the objects stored in the device. Each objects can be either conceal or reveal its personality through its shadow. The images projected can appear quite abstract but I feel this encourages imagination and the user to create narratives around the objects through the act of anthropomorphism.

Business Cards

Dinner Observations

Model Drawings for On/Off

Viva Animations - Shadow Me

150 words to describe my project.

Animating the Inanimate

My project is about finding personality in inanimate objects through the puppetry of everyday life. I am interested in creating narratives around objects, particularly everyday objects as they can seemingly become mundane.

When researching puppetry I became instantly fascinated in shadow puppetry for its poetic storytelling ability. With my work I have designed systems for promoting a space for animation in an objects shadow. My ideas came from the concept of anthropomorphism, the ability to see human attributes in inanimate objects. I designed these objects in order to open up a debate on how we value the objects we choose to surround ourselves with, the objects that make up our home and change perceptions of them. My aim is that these objects would promote this act so the user can create stories of their own. My projection devices work on the idea of the building up of shadow to create other images, making everyday life a stage.

On/Off

Models for On/Off

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.