June 28, 2007: Trash shadow
 

http://cellar.org/2007/trashshadow.jpg

This is featured in a Tate Gallery magazine item called "The Emblem of Earthly Vanities", featuring art with shadows or other things that make us see an art object differently. But xoB found it here at a blog entry featuring shadows in art.

Credit Tim Noble and Sue Webster for the work entitled "Dirty White Trash (with Gulls)", 1998. And the interesting thing is... the trash shown is said to be six months of the artists' refuse.

I think that is great. There are also some good ones on the Earthly Vanities website you posted.

Thanks UT and xoB!

The artist threw away a pair of perfectly good seagulls?

Hi Coign.

You know how it is. Those seagulls were SO last year! ;)

amazing detail in the shadow figures

I think this one illustrates how the 3-D pile gives no clue as to what the shadow will look like. I'm in awe of people who think this stuff up.

Is that Flint's drum set?

I don't think that's the actual shadow. Certainly that's the case for HE/SHE piece (in that second link).

They are all actual shadows.

With the possible exception of Flint's.

Bruce who? Bruce Lee? Bruce Almighty? Bruce the Shark? I don't recognize the 3D shape for that profile, Flint. Could you be more specific?

I'm always thinkin' ...
 

What about a sculpture that appears to be one thing, but casts the shadow of a different thing? Srsly

Like a would be cartoonist that proves to be a childish AGer.

No, really. If the sculpture that casts the shadow had a visual meaning of it's own, different from the shadow. That would be really tricky.

That's what the thread is about. I'm not surprised you didn't know that.

A pile of trash is pretty visually flexible when you're aiming for a desired effect on the other side. So is a welded together mess of pots and pans, or whatever that is. These pieces have one subject. What I'm talking about is a piece with two distinct subjects, IE a statue of object A that casts a shadow of object B. What would complicate this is that the shadow is fixed (2-D) but people could look at the 3-D part from different angles.

Flint -- even better if different light angles produced different shadow images. Then you could have the 3D object on a rotating platform and the shadow would change to show different 2D images.

A pile of trash with two seagulls is an identifiable sculpture. Being easy to create or "visually flexible" has no bearing on it. It's recognizable and casts a shadow of something completely different. If you want it to be a more defined sculpture, why don't you go make one and stop bothering the adults?

Interesting. What I've been working on is casting a flat image on an irregular surface, so that when viewed from a specific angle, the visual data compiles back into the original flat image. The obvious limitation, depending on how you look at it (no pun intended) being that you have to view it from that specific angle. Now, I don't know about moving images, but I suppose I could attempt maybe three fixed images viewed from three distinct vantage points, cast on one 3-D object. (I'll leave it to your imagination what specific object I'm using as a "canvas" here...)

Julian Beever has done some interesting 3-D sidewalk drawings with chalk, like:
http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/images/coke.jpg

and

http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/images/sosie.jpg

Here's another good one:

http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/images/batman.jpg

Keep in mind that these are all 2D, and only look right from one angle.

You can find more here.

More than the other ones, at least. They're all amorphous, but one has seagulls.

This reminds me of the digital sundial (check out #8).

Couldn't find a good recipe.

The closest thing to what I'm thinking, regarding multiple images cast and reproduced on a single, complex 3-D surface, and this is a gross over-simplification, but you know those billboards that change as you drive by? Like that, but, not to name the particular object, it's much more interesting than parallel, vertical louvers with angled facets.

To do what I'm talking about, you'd need something like a Tracer, which I do have, and which most notably a friend and I used to blow up a single eye from an india ink, cross-hatched illustration (he did) of a photograph of a model's face, up from about one inch to about ten feet across, then re-colored it with oil pastels, thus making a perfect photographic reproduction of a human eye that you can only see from at least twenty feet away.

And what did it's shadow look like?

Aren't all piles of trash amorphous at first glance? That was the point, they are supposed to appear as piles of trash and not hint at the shadow they would produce, even though they were carefully constructed like any other sculpture.

To carry this idea to a really ridiculous level (because, why not?), I suppose you could cast the shadow of one 3-D object onto another 3-D object, and have the resulting image represent a third subject (appearing to be 2-D on the surface of the second 3-D object). Continuing to expand upon the idea of shapes and images projecting and changing upon the surface of one another, eventually you could build an Escher-esque funhouse where you wouldn't even be sure what you were looking at! This thread certainly opens up what you might even call a can of worms. Like, art worms.

Seagulls, shadows, or whatever, we're all fortunate to be viewing this away from the stink of 6 month old garbage.:yelsick:

I think that was Flint's point.

Wow, do you or he have any close vs. far pics of that? I would love to see how that turned out!

I'd say this is definitely a case of someone suffering for their art!

I don't have any pics; but as soon as I get a chance (whenever I go to my friend's house next) I will take some from the normal standing-next-to-the-wall-looking-at-a-painting range, and then from the distance-that-the-image-starts-to-make-sense range.

.

.

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So, I sketched up some diagrams...
..the first two involving casting shadows on 2-D and then 3-D surfaces, while the 3-D surfaces retain their information...
..the third involving projected, visible light images, reproduced on 3-D surfaces, so that different images become visible depending on the angle:

Flint -- you've certainly put a lot of thought into this.

But the artist's point was to make a sculpture of the trash they generated in six months and have it show a shadow of them. To say that isn't a real sculpture, that it doesn't look like anything, the art work is only the shadow, is assinine. It was contructed to look exactly like the artist intended.

Yeah, but it is impossible as drawn. Projecting visible images on planes that don't exist. Projecting two images on a single plane and only see one of them at a 45 degree angle. Even Disney can't do this fairy tale.

Over thinking. Nothing particularly hard about this. It's literally a matter of perspective.

But the shape of the pile of trash is irrelevant, if not for the shadow. The materials are the artistic statement of the pile, not the shape.

On a plane, yes, but it's possible on a 3D surface for the shadow to make one image from one angle and another image from another angle.

Nice illustrations, BigV.

"Image A reproduced on this plane". There is no plane.
"Image B reproduced on this plane". There is no plane.
Viewed from the image A projection point you will see half of image B if it's projected on a sphere or cylinder. From the same point you wouldn't see all of image A, unless it was a whole lot smaller than the sphere or cylinder, or what ever the hell that is, that has the planes that don't exist going through it. It won't work.
I won't even bother trying to explain why the other two are bullshit, his knowledge of optics is obviously zero.

Perhaps he should have used the word "projection", or "cross-section". I understood it, at least.
And if it was neither a sphere nor a cylinder, but a shape designed to catch shadows in a very specific way, you get a different result.The other two work as well. The sculptures are not cylinders, the circles indicate "insert sculpture here".

Then you are as fucked up as he is. You can't project on a cross section. Duh "Projected image is not shadows, it's an image. Where the fuck does it say insert sculpture here?
1st diagram ~ In order to get the shadow of profile A alone, profile B has to be smaller. If Profile B is smaller, then you can't see it from "viewer".
2nd diagram has an order of magnitude more errors.

But, I tell you what, you build it and put it up on YouTube and I'll admit I'm wrong.

That's a pretty obtuse way to interpret it. You project on the surface, and the [plane, cross section, 2D projection, whatever you want to call it] is "what the pattern looks like from that angle". Like if you look at a cube from on angle, it's a square. From another, it's a rectangle. From another, it's a hexagon. If you project a pattern onto that cube, and move around it, the 2D projection of that pattern that you see will change shape. And if it's a more complicated shape than a cube, you can get more complicated patterns.

A projected image is a shadow. A shadow is a projected image. The shadow of a colored translucent film can be more interesting than the shadow of an opaque object, but it's all the same in this context.

Profile B is "what the viewer sees when looking at the object from the indicated position". If the object is visible, then the viewer can see Profile B. Whether it's bigger or smaller than Profile A is irrelevant.

This all seems to be based on some misunderstanding you have of Flint's terminology and diagram conventions. It all works.

I certainly don't have anything negative to say about the piece in the original post here, I think it's very clever. That the artist actually carried through with the idea, past the conception phase and into the execution (with real, stinky garbage, no less!) is incredible.

As a further compliment to the artist, their work has inspired me with a few ideas of my own. How great is that? Artwork that makes you think. Even got BigV to illustrate some pretty peculiarly-shaped objects (very cool, BigV).

For the most part, I think this has beed a very positive, stimulating thread. Thanks for another great IotD, Undertoad.

. You seem to be morphing the illustrations into some concept you have in your head. I said what he drew won't work, and it won't.

HM, you are doing a fine job in this thread handling some pretty mystifying assertions and addressing some baffling misconceptions.

You're doing this maturely and intellectually, in the face of unfounded name calling and ridicule.

This reminds me of some photos that are hanging on the wall in the lobby of Building 26 at Microsoft. Check out the Empty Spaces series: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/artc...wplay/gallery/

Totally not reading the main thread, but I almost can't believe those shadows are generated by inanimate objects like trash and metal circles or whatever.

Cool stuff. But continue on with whatever the mud slinging was here.

Almost- the diagram created the concept in my head. That's what diagrams are for.
And if you follow blueprints incorrectly, you end up with weird, quarter-cylinder-shaped "doors" you can't walk through.
Agreed. I did find it off-putting that this discussion with Bruce almost made it seem as if I were putting the original artist down in some way.

Quick and dirty demo of the first diagram.

Very nice, except it's not what's shown in the first diagram. Profiles A and B don't intersect.

Whatever that means. It's exactly what was portrayed by the diagram. If it is not what you thought the diagram meant, you were mistaken. The profiles "intersect" insomuch as any two different 2D projections of a 3D object "intersect".

intersect

• verb 1 divide (something) by passing or lying across it. 2 (of lines, roads, etc.) cross or cut each other.

— ORIGIN Latin intersecare ‘cut, intersect’.

I thought you said they don't intersect ???

I'm not sure what it is you think the word "profile" on the diagram means, but that word seems to be what is preventing you from understanding the diagrams, which is why I tried a few other words.

What I understand it to mean is "the 2D pattern that the object appears as when viewed from the designated angle". As such, any two of them, as long as they aren't colinear, will "intersect", though I'm not sure the word is completely relevant.

Yours do, his don't. Yours are impossible, his are possible.

You've demonstrated your interpretation of what he diagrammed. It would be an interesting World if every craftsman was allowed to interpret the plans.

My interpretation works, yours apparently doesn't.

If you look at blueprints, you don't interpret the

http://www.ehouseplans.com/blueprint...ueprint-12.gif

as a quarter-cylinder.

Ah, well. We seem to be repeating ourselves.

*thinks to self*

oh..my...f'king gawd,,,give me a break


way to dissect childs play

....it's shadow play Flint! http://www.w1k.com/entries/9500/9904_w.jpg




ok don't get mad. I am not attacking you...just saying.

Maybe this will help? From dictionary.com:

In other words, exactly what my diagram illustrated.

The "vertical plane" that a profile is formed on can intersect with a "vertical plane" upon which a different profile is formed. If these profiles are made to represent two different objects, then, from the viewer's persepctive, the first object casts the shadow of the second, different, object.

Your doorway is a standard symbol and universally understood. Obviously we'll never agree on this. I believe the divergent point was, "insert sculpture here".