I booked out the Dark space in the Art Block (it’s a medium sized room that becomes fully dark with the door shut) about a week before in order to photograph the work I have already done and take a look at the shadows cast from the objects and materials I have been experimenting with.
I started with the Foam cut outs (which I had done about 5 days before hand), I decided to suspend each of them from the ceiling using fishing wire (so you can’t see it much in the shadows cast) and push pins. I was excited to try the foam cut outs as I was interested to see how solid the shadows cast would be and also whether the light would partially pass through the Foam or not.
I played around with the display of each foam piece, as you will see. I then turned off the lights and used the light on my phone to light each one up, as shown below:
*I would like to apologise for the quality of some of these images, my camera struggled to focus in on some of the shadows due to the low light levels!*
Foam #1 
Foam #2 
Foam #3 
I experimented with the shadows by positioning the light in different places in relation to the foam cut out. As you can see in some of the images I also got someone else to interact with the foam to change its shape. Next I started hanging more than one foam cut out at a time and also used multiple lights:
Taping the ‘lights’ to the wall 
I was surprised how solid the shadows cast were from the Foam- the light didn’t pass through the Foam at all! Shame! I was so interested in the difference between positive and negative shadows cast by these foam shapes. I was also very satisfied with the overlap of positive and negative shadows when using multiple lights and positioning them differently. I also took a video of the overlapping shadows cast from this, the link to the video will be up in a few days!
Next I photographed the Wax works:
Wax head 
in a corner 
side angle 
negative wax cut out 
interaction between the two 
When I was photographing these two objects I was really interested in the relationship between the two (as displayed in the last few images), although I felt that the shadows cast from them in general were not that interesting! I also photographed a piece of newspaper dipped in wax to see if the light would pass through it, it did but only slightly:
Newspaper 
green light coming through it
Next I photographed the rough metal cut outs, and allowed them to interact with each other and also a person, as shown below:
Metal cut out 
Shadow cast 
different angle 
interaction 
Human interaction 
Drawn round
Through photographing these Metal works I felt that the shadows cast were far stronger and sharper than the wax shadows! I found it interesting to combine the objects together and draw around them, I also considered more human interaction with the objects as well!
Lastly I tried to photograph the cut outs made from glue, I suspended these from the ceiling as well, as shown:
When I photographed the glue cut outs they kept spinning round a lot and the shadows cast from them were not any different from the foam shadows, therefore I felt there was no real need to use this material again.
I feel as though I have plenty of things to think about after this session in terms of display and interaction as well as materials to use in the future.
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