“Shadow, Glare” is an art piece devised by Erin Shirreff and programmed by Seth Erickson. Glare explores the viewer’s sense of awareness with computer screens and displayed information. It is a reminder of how attention can be fragmented by elements that live inside and beyond the screen.The MAC only installable application projects a slowly morphing shadow that mimic the interruptions caused by natural light onto the surface of the physical screen.
Shadow, Glare explores such experiential disruptions through a subtle visual intervention: Without altering the computer’s normal operations, the program renders a morphing series of translucent forms that seem to float between the screen’s real surface and the immaterial desktop. This simulation can blend unobtrusively with any actual shadows that happen to be cast on the screen; users may continue to work or browse while only peripherally aware that the program is running. But the slowly evolving forms can also occlude the desktop and interrupt the user’s focus.
To Shirreff, these subtle shifts in attention characterize the experience of working at a computer: “Time evaporates, and while at points I’m engaged, for the most part I’m folded into the experience, while somehow still scanning its surface.” Unlike an object in an art gallery designed for close observation, Shadow, Glare operates between the multiple levels of awareness encouraged by a computer interface.
(via Triple Canopy, Issue #9)
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