Sfumato
construction of a scenery based on the
optical properties of cellophane and
polyethylene
2022
installation
materials:
- spotlight
- wind produced by ventilator
- lenses
- cellophane foil
- polyethylene foil
- paper
- video camera
- screen
phenomena:
-
interaction of light with foils (caustics, absorption, reflection)
-
image formation in 4f system (projection, magnification, analogous filtering)
- movement of foils in wind produced by ventilator
„Sfumato“ and the curatorial intervention of Wolfgang Obermair, namely a ventilator
that shifts the exhibition space into a kind of second nature.
Sfumato is an oil painting technique employed by Leonardo DaVinci and other Renaissance painters to mimic the natural phe-
nomenon of aerial perspective. I leverage the optical and mechanical properties of
artificial materials to construct an image reminiscent of a hazy landscape, which is digitally broadcasted live on a screen.
In order to produce this phenomenon, a delicately adjusted optical setup is
employed - a so called 4f-system with two pieces of cellophane in the object
plane and a piece of polyethylene foil roughly in the Fourier plane where analogous filtering occurs. The resulting slightly moving image is picked up
by a camera from the correct perspective and shown live on a monitor.