“Shadows” by Sylvia Pengilly
Screenshot of one of Pengilly's compositions, from Wikipedia
Title:
- Shadows
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Exhibiting Artist(s):
Symposium:
- FISEA'93: Fourth International Symposium on Electronic Art
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More artworks from FISEA'93:
Artist Statement:
Solitaire: Revelations
Dualities: Merging
Triune: Kaleidoscope
Shadows is a three movement work that operates at a number of different artistic levels. Its most immediate level describes the many different facets of our personalities: the solitary seeker of truth (Solitaire: Revelations), the Yin/Yang polarity (Dualities: Merging), and the glorious mixture that defines the richness of the individual personality (Triune: Kaleidoscope). At a deeper level it references Plato’s Myth of the Cave, asking which is the true reality: the flesh and blood dancers or their digitized images.
Technically, the piece uses the Mandala software, written by Francis MacDougall, of Toronto, Canada, running on an Amiga 3000. The images of the dancers are introduced into the computer using a video camera throught the Live! digitizer. Non-normative settings of the digitizer cause the dancers’ images to act as stencils, thus their bodies become silhouettes, revealing cycling graphics in the background. The piece is structured as a series of scenes, to each of which is assigned a specific musical sequence, thus the Amiga controls both the visual and musical aspects of the piece. The graphics, which will never be totally visible, were derived from many sources and were created in their final form using Deluxe Paint III.
Sylvia Pengilly, choreography, dance
Michael Engel & Meagan Mayer, dance
