Painting with light 以光為象

I am not talking about “Painting with light” as a photographic technique here. Rather, it is about re-creating the image of light and shadow with new digital mean, and also a courses to be taught by Prof. Julian Lee in university.

Prof. Lee created a piece named Transporter earlier last year during the Burning Edge exhibition, making use of a new projection surface, smart film, to bring back a moment of him, in combination with programmed lamp and projected video.

The smart film, is a thin electronic sheet that we can attach it to a glass or an acrylic. It was originally a sun shielding product on windows, but people starts to realize that it can be used as a projection screen, with a variable transparency.

When it is fully opaque, it acts like a back-projection screen; and when it turns into transparent, some of the projection light still catches on screen, and appear like a translucent screen.

During the past few months, I joined him to create a new piece, a standing glass panel with a stainless steel base, attached with the same kind of smart film as a large projection installation.

We were experimenting any different kind of possibilities on “making image” with it, using various combination of video, observing the light projected in different opacity of the screen, and sometimes even adding smoke for tests.

In the semester, we are going to share our experience to students of the course, and hopefully they would explore with us more variations and possibilities.

I use MaxMSP to do visual programming and video effects, and I would love to share them. Here is one of them for download.

VIDEO REVERB source example

Julian's Installation in progress

After the course, some of the best student works will go into an exhibition held by early May. Stay tuned.

Leave a reply