Application of the Afterimage Effect to Sculpture

L C O I I ~ ~ O , Vol. 1I, pp. 304-305. 0Pergamon Press Ltd. 1978. Printed in Great Britain. 0024-094Xi78/ I001-0304%0Z.00/0 APPLICATION OF THE AFTERIMAGE EFFECT TO SCULPTURE Joyce R. Ozier* 1. Recently I applied the visual afterimage effect to sculpture by placing in front of viewers an object illuminated from behind by a flash of white light in a darkened room. As is well known, if one views a disc of light for a short period of time, for example such as produced by a photographer’s flash bulb, one experiences an afterimage of the flash that may persist for as long as five minutes. When an opaque object is placed between the flash and the eyes, a negative afterimage of the object’s silhouette will be experienced because of the temporary neural saturation in the retinas of the eyes (Fig. I). I n the dark. the afterimage is sharper, since the eyes are exposed to a sharper contrast of light intensity. This contrast causes the nerve endings to respond acutely and leaves them fatigued and slow to return to the normal state [I]. I regard such an afterimage as a kind of’shadow’ of an object, since it is produced by a light source whose radiation has been obstructed. However, the ‘shadow’ exists for a while after the light source ceases to radiate, independent of subsequent motion or changes of the object. Interesting work has been done by the artist Robert Baldwin with much shorter duration light flashes than I have used. His concern has been with the phenomenon of subliminal stimulation of visual perception rather than with the experience of perceiving the afterimage [2]. 2. When 1was asked to present an event at the Beethoven Festival at Arnhem, the Netherlands, in June 1977, I decided to demonstrate the afterimage obtainable from a sculptural object. The fact that Beethoven composed some of his most important works after he became deaf intrigued me. My previous work with shadows led me to . *. I . .. .. *Artist. 4574 West Eighth Ave., Vancouver, British Columbia, V6R 2A5. Canada. (Received 21 Feb. 1978.) try to produce an experience that would parallel Beethoven’s experience of composing music when he was deaf. I wanted to produce a shadow experience without perceiving the object and the radiation from the light source. It was in this way that I arrived at the sculptural afterimage idea. To work out the details of the event I experimented with the afterimage effect first by looking at my extended hand when illuminated from behind in my darkened studio by a flash from ;I photographic flashbulb. Then I observed the afterimageswith the use ofa set of toy blocks to produce various silhouettes. Later in my tests I increased the distance between me and the light source atid I replaced the blocks by larger objects and solitary and grouped human subjects. The object I chose for the event, which I called ‘In Homage to Beethoven’s Fifth’, consisted ofa row ofseven posts (diameter 15 cm and height 2 m) standing above ground (Fig. 2). The spacing of the posts was intended to bring to mind the timing of the tones in the principal theme of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (da-da-da-daah’). The four closely spaced poles on the right were intended to be viewed as one unit. A horizontal bar, on which five battery-operated flashbulbs (type: Philips PF 100) were mounted, was located close to the ground about one meter’behind the row of posts. The flashbulbs were not provided with rear reflectors. The event took place at midnight in a clearing of Arnhem’s Sonsbeek Park. The setting was dark and quiet; the sounds were mostly those ofthe wind in the trees. The spectators stood behind a marked line about three meters from the posts and were told to concentrate their attention on the appearance of the row of posts when the flash went off. Some of the spectators reported experiencing the afterimage with the silhouette of the posts for several 304 Application o f the Afterimage Effect to Sculpture 305 minutes after the flash. For them the afterimage seemed to weave in and out...