SHADOW FRAMING: a collaborative installation

We've just mapped our interacting shadows with chalk frames on the sidewalks of Bonisteel outside the Art & Architecture Building. Our framing projects were also represented on the sidewalk with chalk frames interacting with chalk outlines of branch shadows. Obstructions to light, objects that block light, objects that block light that are opaque, are not conduits through which light passes, and so forth, can cast shadows, flat silhouettes of the light-stopping object system. Shadows are outcomes of interactions involving opaque objects and light. The shadow seen is the two-dimensional of obstruction, the flat architecture of blockage.

These chalk frames of shadows mark where shadows were. Where light was blocked.

They also mark time as shadow length changes throughout the day; every moment has its own set of shadows. The same shadow is not moving; instead, the shadow clock is moving, each moment projecting its own time signature with a silhouette wherever an object blocks the projection.

We produced chalk memories of interactions with light.

Short-lived chalk memories prepared to fade in a number of interactions with shoes, bicycle tires, rain, perhaps even some late March and/or early April snow. A fading away or washing away eventually to nothing? to forms of residue so diluted, the residue will be like nothing, yet not quite nothing in an infinite dissipation or will there ultimately be absolute erasure? no lasting remnant (on even the tiniest scale), no successful modification of even the most insignificant component of a molecule, an atom, a subatomic particle? Did not chalk dust become part of air, will not something of that dust settle somewhere that won't be exactly where the chalk dust was launched? (an idea of it obviously is landing in my brain, chalk dust spores that perhaps will be fertilized by something in my mind, then will sprout, grow, drive me into chalk frenzy and [further] obsession)

—the bonding of chalk and sidewalk has been superficial: the bottom surface of the chalk line in direct contact with the top surface of concrete, the line perhaps thicker when there's imperfection in the concrete, little dips and cracks that the chalk fills. Occasionally, chalk misses concrete altogether as the bottom surface of the chalk line makes direct contact with a leaf or other debris whose bottom surface is in contact with the top uneven surface of concrete. There is no unassisted observable evidence that chalk penetrates the surfaces on which mark-making occurs. There is discoloration of the chalk as it's used; something of the surface being marked alters the color; some particles evidently adhere to the stick of chalk. The chalk visibly dwindles. It shrinks as it's used. Each mark is subtracted from the stick of chalk. Not all of the chalk reduction goes to mark-making on uneven concrete surfaces; some of the chalk marks the fingers holding it in the act of mark-making on uneven concrete surfaces on Bonisteel. And it appears that something of Bonisteel is transferred to the chalk; the tip becomes sooty-looking in the exchange, but the sidewalk does not seem to dwindle.

We've made temporary documentation only. Left on Bonisteels's sidewalk for a few days was acknowledgment of purpose other than a lasting mark. As if we're being respectful of other marking that will happen, is happening behind me, right outside six connected windows looking out on Bonisteel.

With a lamppost near the chalk frames of the shadows of five female artists, I'm attempting documentation of a shadow array, progression of the shadow projection over time, using five colors of chalk to mark shadow progression time lines; four such time lines represent some of the progression of the lamppost shadow during forty-five minutes of chalk mapping.

I further framed what we accomplished with a couple of geotagging apps on my phone, while delighting in the way shadows of branches filled the outlines of our shadows (five female artists) with a capillary system.

Our efforts today may not qualify us for the pavement art competition, pictured here, on Bold street in Liverpool, but we join others in finding pleasure, purpose, and necessity in temporary mark making, perhaps some of which was occurring elsewhere as we made chalk marks here on Bonisteel.

While we have no proof of art, we do have proof of having made chalk marks that approximated locations of shadows, approximated because the outlines drawn deviated in varying degrees from tracing the outlines of the shadows exactly. The shadow tracing was imprecise yet provided the only temporary documentation of silhouette shape and size at a particular time on a particular day.



The shadow collection mentioned here is no longer available for visitation on the Bonisteel sidewalk. Installed on a Monday, updated on the following Tuesday and Wednesday, gone during the transition from Friday twilight to Monday daybreak, erased by rain. I'd hoped to capture this erasure on film, but I was not present. The shadow marking project will continue, with black chalk, at least until I am able to capture erasure by rain. I also plan some moonlit capture and moonlit marking.

In the recent past I've captured shadows resulting from obstructions of interactions of moonlight and of artificial light from other lampposts on Bonisteel, across the street from my current lamppost preference: forking silhouettes of Duderstadt Center trees, as shown on the left. Though at that time, I felt compelled to capture, I was not then primed to mark and map beyond marking and mapping the image into multiple systems of memory: an SD card, an external hard drive that warehouses 407GB of images I've captured, and my limited forked mind.



Ellis G is a Brooklyn-based street artist specializing in drawing shadows. In the following video, he discusses process and permits a glimpse into his practice:




Our shadow project collaboration with time certainly is an experiment, but an experiment of mostly, it must seem, an aesthetic nature though the project offers commentary on brevity and acknowledges that humanity is an obstruction to light: we cast dark shadows. We block illumination. Ellis G also is a chalk artist whose work, like ours, is on the furthest fringe of social intervention at best. Perhaps in some almost incidental way (at least at first), our tracing impermanent shadows calls to attention the power required to create permanent shadows, situations where the source of the shadow perishes, but the shadow, like those above from pegasus.phys.saga, formed under tremendous and unusual circumstances persists, burned into the host of the shadow, for instance, during atomic bomb blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These shadows do not mark passage of time, but lock into one moment, extends that moment where light, heat are of such magnitude to burn a silhouette into surfaces in a three-dimensional photographic album of nuclear disaster and nuclear power when the power of a sun comes close enough to embrace us, life depends on thermonuclear star engines at just the right distance, to warm and illuminate, without burning.

Embrace as Boundary of Connection System (some power of bendable tines in Limited Fork Theory)

I've always thought embrace to be powerful
and even more so today, thanks to Eliana's bringing of integrity to class
and the weaving of integrity (or its absence) into considerations
of boundary formation, boundary maintenance, boundary experience.

so in embrace, in hug, there is also interlocking, a weaving of (figurative or physical) arms;
there is what ann marie adams depicts here:
and at fine art america.


It is a form of weaving, a form of building a responsive bridge, one able to bend, yield, extract something from a partner, yet retain some of its own integrity when the embrace, for it is not permanent, ends —or is, rather, I could say, suspended, so as to allow for resumption of embrace. The connective experience of existence may be configured as series of interrupted embraces. Moments of attachment and tethering intersperced with moments of separation in which there may be resonance of embrace leading to desire, need for more physical embrace, and not just the memory which is free to transform within the boundaries into other shapes, other measure of imaginary intensity.

A weave connection permits more contact; more surface area becomes subject to influence; mixing can be more intense. There is the making of crossroad after crossroad as warp and weft elements crisscross, horizontal bridging alternating with vertical bridging —such tines!

And so much meaning is also woven into such connections; indeed, yarn is also passing through the loom of fingers


and the looms of democracy, commerce, identity, ambition; the looms of embrace of landscape and ourselves:



Into my genetic identity is the embrace of multiple races, one that persists even when entities and forces break the loom of human embrace with temporary (even hundreds of years is temporary because of an overriding configuration of temporariness of stuff in the universe) bouts of prejudice, bigotry, discrimination —I do not become undone; what is woven into me remains locked in embrace that does not conflict, does not confuse me, does not beg me to chose anything other than being woven.



This wasn't why one of my favorite toys as I grew up was Remco's The Little Red Spinning Wheel until now. It is my in basement. Tonight, it comes off of its high shelf and is temporarily, for that is the nature —so far— of all things, reinstated into service.

—I can't believe I haven't bothered to photograph my little red spinning wheel, something I won't be able to say truthfully after tonight—

Use as Directed film (at onedotzeroadventures in motion festival) as story body system

If you happen to go to the onedotzero adventures in motion festival at the British Film Institute, from 11-14 November, you'll be able to attend a screening of Use as Directed by Ansted Moss, in Wow+Flutter 10:

Use as Directed from Ansted Moss on Vimeo.

Use as Directed is a story system about systems of convergence and conspiracy, where parts intersect and interact as a single body to accomplish a shared goal. Once connection between parts is established, the body system benefits from a combining of forces. The body system is a more powerful complex structure than any single part comprising the body system.

In the animation technique of this short film, some visual distinctness of each component of the composite structure remains apparent, loss of distinction tending to occur where boundaries touch and opportunity for merger is asserted to varying degrees on various scales. The merged form is the offspring of interaction (1+1=3 again, as Rima pointed out earlier in the semester).

Participation in this story body system does not render the components unable to be part of other systems, but some form of memory of having been attached to this Use as Directed body system will likely travel with the components into other systems of (temporary) connection.

Use as Directed explores formation of a story body system, and formation of purpose for body assemblage. In establishing configurability of the body, Use as Directed suggests that other configurations are possible; the built body could be unbuilt then rebuilt differently, that story related to stories of other configurations, but not exact duplicates, of course; any given configuration perhaps seemingly more endearing for the unlikelihood of exact duplication. Then too, this configurability suggests a generalized compatibility of parts, even that anything be considered a part, and certainly in the manipulation strategies of a maker, that which is prevented from being combined according to rules and obstructions of three-dimensional reality, can be combined in the various spaces and media of aesthetic and imaginative expression. Designation as part brings with that designation, an idea that part should connect with or be a component of something, should become a part of something, leaving bits and parts of itself behind during the tenure of the temporary partnership, and acquiring something from other parts of a body system in which a part has temporary membership.

Explore more of Ansted's visual theory at kna'Knox.com

Constructing the Story Body (where tines converge)

In this approach, story system (system in part because multiple angles, multiple configurations, multiple modes of expression, etc. will be considered, and system because different parts are involved, a telling that is not a single narrative element, an unfolding that could be interactive, might not be expected to end, an unfolding that could be generative, etc.); in this approach, the story system will be considered as an organism, something that reacts to and responds to its environment, something that can grow, change, something that came into existence somehow, with or without intelligent design; an entity that is part of a community of possibly similar and possibly dissimilar entities/iterations (that community can be as local as the multicellular organism's own body and as distant as the superorganisms that form from interactions of multiple organisms, collective dependence), an entity made of different parts of various function that together form and/or behave like a single entity, such as the human body (a cooperative society of human cells and microbes). (human brain and global network image from principia cybernetica's article: the social superorganism and its global brain, generative manifesto image from generative.net)

While the story body can be or seem relatively static, can be a moment or moment-sequence isolated for examination, focus, zooming in or zooming out for a time-stopped, frame-by-frame opportunity to study details, etc.), in this Limited Fork Theory approach to constructing a story body, the static study will have as part of its purpose the seeking of insight into the story system's dynamic forms, movement of idea, evolution of idea, etc; the purpose of discovery. A single aspect of the story system (just one tine) can be the focus of the story body you construct, with some nod to the aspect's role or participation in or relationship to a larger (or smaller) system. What you focus on in your story system can be the container of subsystems of the story body, and your focus in your story system can be contained by larger systems or subsystems of something even larger.

So we'll be entering the story body (which is a system) somewhere, a story body that, on some scale, is in progress; we enter something ongoing, establishing a tine that despite how innovative or new it might seem is nevertheless connected to (in some way[s]), is rooted in the already-established, the in-progress [hence some of LFT's commitment to a collaborative nature of all things), the ongoing, interrupting connection somewhere else when we terminate the telling (the body then on its own to interact further with environment and habitat, so not necessarily or even likely to be the end of the story system from which we extract aspects that we shape,that we may split into subsystems, to emphasize in a system related to the ongoing content or subject system, but that is not the actual content or subject system that it might be without our interaction; a tine system of what we might call the actual). We intercept something ongoing when we begin the telling, and we depart from something that persists when we stop our telling.



Does our telling interact with that ongoing system? That is a strong possibility. In telling, a branch or tine of the subject of the telling is at least temporarily established. This subsystem has existence of its own, and mayor may not converge at times with the system to which the subsystem was attached. Could we change or could the system that is the subject of our telling change as a consequence of the interaction of telling the story system, of constructing the story body? That is another strong possibility. Again, the act of telling establishes itself as a subsystem of the subject system of the telling. The telling is not the subject but instead is a related tine, an extension of subject system that may explore the subject system in behaviors and scenarios that the subject system itself does not explore. During moments of our telling, the subject system goes on, perhaps perturbed somehow by interaction with a teller, some influence of a teller; something happens in order for a subject of a telling to become subject. This interaction in which subject becomes subject establishes location (moment) for the interaction, and in that hosting of interaction, a system of telling emerges, a system of telling related to the teller's existence prior to establishment of interaction with the subject and related to the subject's existence prior to establishment of (teller's awareness of) an interaction system with a teller; related to but not identical to prior existences of teller's systems and subject's systems. The same (apparently) subject system may interact with multiple tellers and participate in multiple systems of telling, on multiple scales.


In building a story body, in part we are assemblers; we cobble stuff together from forms of existing stuff, and we can be somewhat reckless and bold in how we form rules and obstructions concerning what can, and what shouldn't be cobbled together, even if only in imagination. In essence, these story bodies may be considered hybrid forms, mutant entities, transformations, alternative species, variations, etc. We bring into existence that which we believe or come to believe warrants temporary emphasis, ideally with a perspective, angle, twist, etc. that differs subtly or profoundly from what already exists. in this way, contributing to a collective story body that through a mesh of connection and intersection, a mesh of tines that seems to fill in more, that seems to acquire density approaching (but not fully arriving) an apparent solidity that if actual might suggest that all connections have been made, all possibilities have been fulfilled, all angles have been visited, etc.

Because of slippage through tines, challenges to forming the complete picture remain; there can be little or no certainty that nothing has fallen through, that everything has adhered to every possible tine in every limited fork and has been assembled in every possible form on every possible scale, including, for sake of completion all possible future forms. Even assembling a complete moment to which we (may believe we) have limited access across the planet will defy completion on all scales in all possible forms; there are gaps in what is known no matter how close we may have come (and oh the fascinating challenges to measure the distance —on all scales— of the fully assembled moment from an absolute completeness of a moment —in all its dimensions, including somehow acknowledgment of all imagined configurations of its completeness, including outcomes of generative configurations, and thoughts of the moment that embrace the past and future of the moment, antecedents and descendants). But even with a miraculous completion, what might emerge may contain more than what is assembled, the sum of the parts of the moment in interacting produce something more than a simple addition; interacting is more complex; some interactions enable tines of behavior, tines of form that are fueled by reactions that occur with the interactions —what Rima refers to as 1+1=3: that which is being added, that what is participating in the interaction and the outcome system that emerges from the interaction system.



There's a touch of homage to Frankenstein here, a story system/body that embraces many tellings and modifications: visual, still, moving, sonic, tactile —many costume options (such as the options in the above image from fancy dress ideas), masks of various materials, skin paint, etc. meant to be temporary —though more permanent cosmetic surgery options exist, including peculiar assisted vanity operations (as shown in the image to the right of Jocelyn Wildenstein from The Daily Mail). Highly manipulated evolutions with intense visual impact without necessarily having direct genetic intervention to influence species change through natural or assisted breeding. Planned and unplanned, coerced or natural genetic mutation helps to produce that which, in departure from expectation and norms, seems monstrous, at least until advantages of the mutation become apparent. A possible monstrous outcome is a necessary risk if more ideal forms (from this tine of perception and that tine of perception) of mutation are to be attained. Various circumstances conspire (it might seem) or somehow align in order to support (temporarily) what emerges from the interaction system. That this happens can be extraordinary, mechanisms that resist maintenance of status quo, that resist, even if it seems pleasant and/or near perfect, permanence, that participate in change —by any means that are or become (tines that emerge, for instance, as consequences or outcomes of interactions) possible.

That transformation is possible is celebrated in many instances of human-manipulated morphing. A redirection of a natural (without direct intervention) progression of form via deliberate structural manipulation whose outcomes may match or deviate (immediately or over time) from a target. Efforts to shape an inevitable change in appearance. Efforts to control inevitable change. To set inevitable tines of change in motion. To stop a tine of events from progressing along what may seem an inevitable path system to inevitable destinations. Of course, intentions and outcomes are systems that may converge and diverge along paths that themselves are systems of gestures and behaviors, shaping and being shaped by interactions with systems of variables on some scale in some location[s] for some duration[s] of time. ¡O for the love of variables!

James Whale's (a filmmaker who who once was a cobbler) 1931 cinematic achievement: Watch Dr. Frankenstein as the moment of achievement emerges in a temporarily ultimate configuration cobbled together from various parts, assembled from diverse sources yet IT'S ALIVE!




All of existence in involved at all times in telling the complex, compelling (I think), story systems of a shared existence system; all of existence is involved in this telling (an assembled involvement in this moment) even without consent or awareness of telling the story, which is to say that telling the story everything is telling may not be is probably not the purpose of existence. The trails of existence, what happens as outcomes of existence become stories of what occurs when existence happens. In the next video, a BMW Z4 tells part of the story of its existence, writing its rolling trail in paint and color in An Expression of Joy:



The moving architecture of existing, of meaning; the assembled story body that itself moves, dances, explores space, that actively tells a story can be explored in work by Theo Jansen, a kinetic sculptor (the Theo Jansen link is to a story system tine about the strandbeest moving in the video story tine of a strandbeest/Jansen collaboration system):



What follows is an assembled story system, a form of video collage story body system that, as described on the video story body's youtube page, is:
A story body made from:
- footages of Heima Dvd
- footages of Theo Jansen docs
- footages of differents Sigur Ros clips
for the great song of Sigur ros


Please enjoy the building of your own story body systems and please post the stories of the building of your story body systems.