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Shadow Play presents four interactive video installations by Scott Snibbe that invite viewers to improvise—walk, dance, jump, move—in an open, sensate field composed of screen, camera, computer, and projector. In each work, the casting and re-casting of viewers’ shadows on white, wall-mounted screens propel the interactive experience. Snibbe has made the means of activation direct and intuitive, underscoring the essential role of the audience in the realization of his artwork. Immediately, viewers see and feel the results of their play; as their shadows appear and re-appear on the screens, the formal qualities and narrative sequences of the emergent imagery evolve in response.

Picturing shadows has long been a subject in both Western and Eastern art. Indeed, it is said that the first paintings were of the human shadow—taking not the body directly but its silhouette as their subjects. Scott Snibbe, with his masterful explorations in electronic, interactive media, picks up on this rich history and at the same time pushes the representation of shadows in new expressive directions. Shadows are an inherently interactive phenomenon. In light’s path they follow us, we follow them, a re-doubling back and forth. Outside our body, they are nonetheless of our body—traces of our presence that simultaneously highlight our absence from the precise space they occupy.

Even more, cast shadows are evidence of real-ness. In front of a light source, the material, three-dimensional form of our body is re- figured as a dark, though flattened, likeness on a nearby surface. Our shadow’s imprint proves that we are there; we are present, corporeal, in the flesh. But shadows, themselves, are fleeting and immaterial. Though intimately connected to us, we cannot possess our shadow, touch, or hold it.

Snibbe’s work and the resulting effect that they (as we) have on the flow of screen images, we are made acutely aware of our body’s real presence and trajectory through space. The shadow as a signal of real-ness, however, is called into question, for the cinematic performance engendered by our shadows follows not from our body alone; rather, it is dependent on our complex interaction with the screen, camera, projector and computer. The space and terms of our shadow play are reactive as much as they are interactive, seamlessly constructed by Snibbe to produce an experience that is extraordinary. At the same time, Snibbe probes the illusory nature of shadows by enlivening the shadow image. In each of his screen works, shadows become active agents with apparent substance and form. The boundary between what we take to be “real” and “unreal” is thus porous and constantly in flux in Snibbe’s projections, stirring us to examine our assumptions about our bodies and our relationship to the environment in which we act.

Links to Snibbe‘s art:
Compliant, 2002
Deep Walls, 2003
Shadow Bag, 2005
Visceral Cinema: Chien, 2005

Public Programs: Friday, April, 2005, 22 6-9pm Opening Reception Free and open to the public Saturday, May 14, 2005, 4pm Curator Talk with Molly Polk Saturday, June 11, 2005, 2-3pm Family Day Movement workshop led by dancer/choreographer Stefani Reitter Thursday, June 16, 2005, 7pm Dance Performance featuring Stefani Reitter Friday, June 24, 2005, 6-9pm Closing Reception Free and open to the public

   

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