sihand – LookingOutwards 12 – Prior Art

Shadow Art

The first piece of art that inspired my to-be final project is illustrations by artist Vincent Bal. Bal, a Belgium filmmaker and illustrator, finds sparks in everyday objects. By clever use of lighting, angle, and a tad of imagination, he creates playful doodles of the shadows. His drawings particularly interested me because of how well he manipulates angles and produces interesting results based on them.

Another piece of shadow art that inspired me was Shadow Monsters by Philip Worthington. Shadow Monsters was Worthington’s project at the Royal College of Art. His project adds a whimsical twist to the usual shadow puppet fun. As told by Worthington himself, the installation consists of a light box that produces the perfect silhouette, which is fed into a real-time program. The algorithm utilized “blob detection” that isolates, analyzes, and assumes features of the curvature of the shadows. In such, an arm movement can be captured and interpreted into a fire-breathing mouth.

It’s a technological magic trick.   -Philip Worthington

Doodles by Vincent Bal from thisiscolossal

Another video on Shadow Monsters