Shadow Phase

Castlemaine State Festival 2018

Lot 19 Gallery
Category
Excerpt

Phase-space diagrams; stochastic bundles; sunlight and shadow; landscape and its influence.

Shadow Phase is a solar powered drawing instrument. A solar panel outside directly powers two motors - without battery storage, so when it is shaded or cloudy or night, the motors stop moving.

As the sun moves through the day, the trees and cloud create a changeling pattern of energy. This is drawn onto a paper roller which is mains powered. It is a controllable motor so can be adjusted to rotate over any time period: a whole day, an hour, a week , a month or more. Here it is set to create daily drawings of 12 or 24 hour duration. A solid white line on the drawing indicate the passage of night, when there is no signal to the drawing motor. The drawings are titanium white ink on hand painted watercolour paper.

This exhibition was part of Castlemaine State Festival 2018, at Lot19 Gallery

Very Hot and Sunny, 12 hours – silver metallic ink on Paynes Grey hand painted 300gsm watercolour paper

Meerkats

detail

50% Cloudy, titanium White Ink on hand coloured watercolour paper, 90 x 28cm

Installation showing solar panel out doors and whole instrument drawing indoors. A second motor drives soundmaking from the snare drum and metallophone. photo by Ian Hill

Shadow Phase Instrument with a selection of 12 and 24 hour drawings

Improvising music session with the sounds of Shadow Phase with Anna Read and Steve Wilkinson on Mbira and me on Bass Clarinet (photo by Brodie Ellis)

Unfurling a new drawing, photo by Ian Hill