The Shadow Dance

The Shadow Dance by Samual Van Hoogstraten (1675) 

One artist that has used perspective and shadows to demonstrate platonic ideas of illusion is Samuel Van Hoogstraten in his drawing ‘the shadow dance’ (below). In this image Hoogstraten has used ‘shadow play’ to see how light can cause the distortion of scale as it can be seen that objects that are closer to the light can create a larger shadow than those that are farther away. It appears, in this drawing, that the shadows have been cast upon a screen. If the viewer observes closely they may see that at the bottom right of the drawing the audience can be seen peering through the screen which almost represents that of Plato’s escaped prisoner. The idea of the audience watching  on the other side of the screen can be correlated to the prisoners of Plato’s cave as they have been ‘fooled’ into believing that the magnificent shadows have been projected by real forms, when in reality their perceptions have been manipulated by the illusion of scale. 

In his book ‘A short history of the shadow’ author Victor I. Stoichita writes about the drawing “It illustrates that the study of cast shadows was not only a question of perspective but the product of empirical manipulation”. This is almost an identical to the ideas held by Plato in his allegory of the cave as Plato argues that empiricism may sometimes be unreliable.  

 

Contemporary Adaptation

Hoogstraten’s drawing inspired Rafael Lozano Hemmer's outdoor interactive installation ‘Body Movies’ (2001) which was based in the Netherlands and has been exhibited elsewhere. This piece consists of a projectors placed above the building and on ground level to create an exaggeration of scale when a shadow is cast upon the wall.

Hemmer tries to digitally reproduce the principles of Hoogstraten's drawing using a video tracker, a controller initiated by MIDI signals and a camera server which projects images of people onto the space while distorted shadows of passing pedestrians are cast upon the wall. This resembles Plato’s allegory as there is a lasting image (the projection) and a temporary illusion (The shadows).

The interactive aspect of this work reinforces the juxtaposition of what is empirical and what is supernatural because this dormant piece of architecture is transformed into a reflection, or refraction, of human perception and understanding. As Hemmer himself mentions "I'm interested in environments that involve your perception" and enjoys "creating an environment which is connected with people" so it seems that interaction is an integral part of depicting the divide between experience and that which is beyond all experience which, at this scale, has a very profound effect on the viewer.

Regardless of this, critic Graham Coulter Smith describes Hemmer, in his book Deconstructing installation Art, as a creative artist who has been "trained and conditioned to manipulate and transform rather than simply reproduce" the critic goes on to describe Hemmer's fault as a digital artist being an "obsession with technology" so, perhaps, implying that Hemmer should have taken a more reductionist approach in his technique in order to represent the inspiration from Hoogstraten's drawing. However, despite this, I believe that this is a very interesting, philosophically rich and successful piece by Hemmer even though his technique was rather difficult.

"I'm interested in environments that involve your perception ..." - Rafael Lozano Hemmer

(Source(s): Books --> 'Digital Art' by Christian Paul, 'De-constructing Installation' by Graham Coulter Smith:

http://www.installationart.net/Chapter3Interaction/interaction03.html )