Shadow Box Attractions (Variation 2)
2012
Shadow Box Attractions (variation 2) is a three-screen, animated video installation that utilizes a particle chamber simulation to explore novel generative drawing techniques. The software, conceived by artist, David Stout, was realized in collaboration with interactive media programmers, Luke Dubois (USA), Cory Metcalf (USA) and Reiner Kramer (DE). Shadow Box Attractions shares an “imaginative corollary” to historic research in contemporary particle physics, while being an artwork that seeks to dramatize the dynamic interplay of elemental forces. The system can best be thought of as a three dimensional drawing instrument that provides the artist with the opportunity to interact in real-time to control the animated behavior of autonomous particles utilizing reconfigurable “force fields.” Particle animation is a digital graphic technique that appears frequently in feature film and television production. This project bears little resemblance to the general application of CGI (computer graphic imagery) in commercial entertainment media. Instead, the instrument functions to produce artistic outcomes in the form of prints, animated films and live interactive installations. These graphic artifacts are the result of many months of trial and error testing or “tuning” the system to reveal animated behavior that shares profound aesthetic similarities to dynamic pattern formations in the natural world.
In a historic context a number of important discoveries in the field of particle physics were undertaken with the development of specialized containment chambers such as the Bubble Chamber and Cloud Chamber, where the behavior of sub-atomic particles could be amplified, controlled and observed. The project is best thought of as a virtual chamber that facilitates the perturbation and observation of semi-autonomous particle interactions. This live simulation allows the artist to place positive or negatively charged nodes at various locations within a virtual chamber to create complex force fields. These multiple interpenetrating fields interact to yield intricate states of attraction and repulsion. The resulting visual behaviors are rich and varied, from very slow accumulations of atmospheric clouds to swiftly multiplying branches or tree-like structures. In some scenarios the placement, positioning and scaling of the charged nodes give rise to self-perpetuating feedback phenomenon in the form of classic strange attractors. At other times isolated particles perform graceful arcs and swirls or vibrate in stuttering bursts between magnetic poles. Just as often the results can look more like clumps of dust that accumulate in the corners of a neglected room.No matter the outcome, at its core the project serves a poetic impulse to render unseen forces of rare and intricate power. In as much as the work exists as pure abstraction, its instrumental metaphor invokes cold-war era preoccupations. It should not be lost on the viewer that this project mines direct references to now historic weapons research. From an aesthetic perspective the resulting surface and visual tempo veers away from a recognizable “video-look” to suggest something more akin to a graphite drawing on paper.
