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Liddy Scheffknecht
Artist from Vorarlberg, based in Vienna.
You work with a special kind of trompe l’oeil-effect which involves mixing two traditional media — photography and film — and you do it so delicately with the shadows around the objects in place, that it looks like they belong together somehow. What inspires you to so carefully construct these particular illusions? Have you invented a new style of expression here?
In the installations you are mentioning I project a video onto a photography. They merge and appear as one single layer. The photography shows a person and the video shows the shadow of this person, moving very slowly. It maybe exists somewhere else, but I’ve never seen it in this way before. I’m pretty interested in the subject of shadows — actually for a very long time now. In literature the independent acting shadow often appears in the form of the Doppelgänger motif. If the shadow of a character acts on its own he often becomes a Widersacher (an opponent). There is always something uncanny about it. This motif I’m translating into fine art. I came up with the idea of a person frozen in time — with the technique of photography — and then to add the moving shadow in another layer.
But that’s not the only point. I’m interested in blurring the line between photography and video, thinking “what is actually a photograph?”, “what is a video?”, “what is the difference and what happens if you combine the two of them?”. I was interested in the perception of a combination. How you perceive this two different time layers. So the work deals with the subject of time as well.
The photographs for these installations are not chosen randomly. Mostly, the people in the photography are in movement. For example, they are doing sports, like cycling or skating or something like that. The photography catches a moment in time, which is probably not even perceivable to the human eye. The projected video, on the other side, shows a slow, but ongoing movement.
Untitled (Mica), video projection (6‘ 25‘‘) on pigment print (100 x 133 cm), 2011.
I find the trick is very effective; you see this person and expect movement, it does not move, and then the shadow comes in very subtle movements.
Exactly. It moves very, very slowly.
So you capture a very short moment and then kind of meditate on it?
Yeah. I try to merge two conflicting time systems into a unity which is puzzling but also kind of harmonic at the same time. It is perceived very differently. Some people find it eerie, others describe it as poetic and beautiful.
The photographs you are using, they are from unknown sources?
Sometimes. I’m always searching for interesting photos at flea markets and antiquariats (second hand book-stores). Most of the photos I find are not suitable, but sometimes there is an image that seems to work. The image of the photographer, for example, is a found image. In the image he is frozen in the exact moment he’s taking a picture. Talking about in terms of photography, this moment is often described as “the right moment”. I enlarged the picture and then I “invented” the shadow. I also added another shadow that grows onto the image from outside the picture’s border, thereby creating some sort of narrative. Unlike the shadow of the photographer, the source of this shadow isn’t clear because it remains outside the frame. The shadow could belong to the person that is photographed by the photographer in the picture. But his camera points towards the spectator. He or she becomes part of the work as well.
How do you actually put the shadow in the videos?
This is a quite technical process. I rebuild the photography in a 3-D graphics program: the space, the person in the photo and so on. Then I animate a light source using the software. The movement of the light creates a moving shadow. Afterwards I refine the result using video editing software.
You also work with room installations, without any software involved. How much time and research do you need to calculate how the light and shadow travels across the room?
The idea of these installations is to create a fake shadow for an interior object. A plant,a chair or a bucket, for example. I attach a paper silhouette to the window of the space where this object is placed. If the sun shines, the silhouette casts a shadow. The earth rotates, the shadow moves… and at a certain point during the day — shorter than a minute — the shadow connects with the object in the room and it seems like they belong together. The rest of the time it looks like the object has lost control over its own shadow.
In the beginning I didn’t have any idea how that could work, how the earth rotates, the shadow transforms during time and all that. I started to experiment and it was more like trial and error. Of course, I knew that the shadows become longer in the evening, that the earth changes its position during the day and also during the year. But only after a time I found out how I could reconstruct and manipulate this system. One important factor is the geographical location. And the difficulty in making an installation like this is that you are working very much against time. Ten days later, everything has changed and you start again from the beginning. You dependent also very much on the weather… you need a lot of sun (laughs).
What happens then, after all the preparations are done, you are about to present your work publicly on the first show and the sun is behind clouds…?
That’s unfortunately part of the work. You can’t do anything. I made two installations in Lithuania. I was on a residency program at the Nida Art Colony. On the first open studio day I it was very sunny and it worked perfectly. The audience could experience the installation. They didn’t at the “right” moment. But they saw another moment so it was okay. A few weeks later I wanted to show another installation and it was cloudy…
Do you film it before, just in case?
Yes, of course. It is very important for me is to have a good documentation. But sometimes I obviously even fail in having that.
Working with real-life factors that you can’t control, do you see it as a part of your creative challenge?
Yes I do. It can be pretty annoying though if you plan according to the weather forecasts; often they say it’s going to be sunny, and I look out of the window and it rains heavily… I then realized that the weather is not predictable (laughs).
Your audience, do they wait for the exact moment of the shadow appearing next to the object?
Often I don’t show the installations since the conditions for doing it have to be perfect. It needs a lot of preparation, sunny weather over a period of time and a perfect space. So the audience sees the video documentation, or the photographs.
Would you like them to reflect on your work in some way?
I’m not expecting a special reaction. I appreciate if the audience takes a little bit of time for my work. I think my works need that. It’s nothing you can consume in a few seconds. I always tried to make works that don’t need a lot of introductory explanations, works that you could enjoy without knowing the context of art history or an actual discourse. They can work on a more intuitive level and hopefully evoke some associations. Probably about perception or about time. About natural light as a medium in art.
Of course you could also see different layers: references to art history, architecture, mythology or literature, sometimes by following the hint given by the title.
For me my works are also a playful and very joyful experiment with our perception, faulty eyes and fixed expectations. This could lead to a significant viewer experience as well, I think. Sometimes it’s all very subtle. In the media hybrids we were talking about earlier, the installations of a projected video onto a photograph, some people don’t consciously realize that the shadow is moving. You have to look at the installations for some moments to see it. Some people told me that even without discovering the movement that there was something deeply striking about the work. I think that a piece of art or an image can have the ability to affect intuitively on a unconcious level.
I once experienced a sort of moving shadow installation by Ryota Kuwakubo’s at the Ars Electronica festival, and I thought it produced an incredible show with simple methods. I came to think about it when I looked at your art, because of the movement/shadow-element in your work. Do you notice a pattern in how your work is evolving, will you continue to work with the hybrid format in one way or another?
I still have some ideas with shadows and sunlight. As long as I am interested in this subject I am going to explore it further. My background comes from the new media; as I started experimenting, I was working with digital images and computers. Now I am working with non-digital material instead. The work series with the sunlight kind of works like an animation. There is natural light projected to the space, it transforms and moves slowly, driven by the earth rotation. When a cloud covers the sun it’s like a “fade out” in a movie, when the sun gets uncovered, it’s like a “fade in”. This is very filmic, I think. You can still see from where I was coming. Just that these filmic installations became analog now and works without electricity.
And this summer I was on a residency in the alps, the SilvrettAtelier where there were a lot of rocks and stones. What I did was to carve my shadow into a granite rock. Working in stone is supposed to be a quite classical media format.
I was interested in capturing, freezing a single moment, like in photography. Next to the stone is a small hiking path and if you hike there in in the afternoon your shadow falls on that rock. I captured mine in stone. In the shadow, you can still see that I carry my hiking gear. A hat, backpack, hiking sticks. It’s like a trace of a hiker in nature or something she has left behind.
Land art, even?
Yeah, an intervention in alpine space working in the medium of a classical sculptor.
Where did you make this specific artwork?
In Vorarlberg, at the Bielerhöhe, about 2,000 m up.
So if I go there and find your work, will I see any information about it?
No… (laughs). At this point, not. I kind of like the idea that you just discover it there.
The machines you were using, they look really heavy.
Yes, they are heavy. On this photo you just see the small machine, though. After a time I had to use another much heavier one because the blades of the small one were worn out.
I could only hold it for 30 seconds before putting it down again. It was kind of horrible. At this point I had only one more day left to do it. Fortunately, a friend was on her way to bring me new blades…
I looked at what you did with your interventions, the one in the woods with the surveillance cameras, for example. I found the concept interesting, to take the technology out of context and present it where it normally does not belong, and still fully functional.
I took something technical from the inside to the outside, from urban space to rural space, and made it work there. It’s a bit like an intervention in the sense of urban art but in the rural area.
You had the exhibition out there too?
No, no… you can stumble upon some installations, like the cameras or the shadow in stone.. and there is a documentation of it.
The shadow theme in your work, you mentioned earlier that you found them also in fables, any particular one?
One of my favorites is der Schatten by Hans Christian Andersen. It’s great… very uncanny. I don’t know exactly anymore how it starts. The story is about an intellectual man and his shadow. He diconnects with his shadow and after a time, the shadow starts to become more and more human…and the man becomes more and more like a shadow. In the end, nobody sees the man as a real person anymore. The shadow gains power… and I think it even marries a princess in the end. He turns against his former master and initiates that the man gets murdered.
A lot of fairy tales tell the story about the sold shadow. In these stories it is never a good thing to loose your shadow. Often it is “sold to the devil”. I think these stories are about the fear of losing control over yourself, the fear that a darker part of your personality might take over control. Sometimes they are also about the fear of change. Like in Peter Pan. He doesn’t want to lose his shadow because it is part of his life as a boy. And, as we all know, Peter Pan doesn’t want to grow up. Lucky Luke is faster than his shadow. He overcomes the impossible, while his dog Rantanplan is drafted to be more stupid than his own shadow. So the independent acting shadow is a motif with many different notions and layers.
Are you interested in ghost stories, too?
Well, I am interested in them too, but it’s not really connected to my work.
What’s coming up for you next?
I am working on a commissioned work, the one you see here (see photo below). It is made for the entrance area of a company. First thing you see is a surveillance camera. This camera is not not directed to the persons coming in. Instead the lense is directed towards the sky. What I do is to re-create the colours of the sky in a screen-like object which is connected to the camera. In the box are LEDs. They are controlled by a computer which is fed by the images of the camera. But you don’t see the LEDs, only the box, filled with the pure, electric light.
I was interested in “how to translate nature”, how to translate natural colour impressions using artifical light… which is of course impossible..
The company asked me to work with components they use for their work as well. They are specialized in technical building services, lightning technology, and so on. I was thinking about how I could make a connection with their technical domain but still work in my artistic field and interest.
So it’s kind of a “mood generator” for the sky…?
The title of it is “450 nm oder Ein Stück vom Himmel”. 450 nanometer is a wavelength of blue light in the visible light spectrum. It has to do with how we perceive a blue sky. About the secont part of the title I’m not sure if it works in English as well. Himmel in German could mean heaven or sky. I like the double sense of this word. It has a mythological connotation. You take a piece of heaven and bring it to earth. It is meant ironically as well.
If you see the light object it all looks very abstract. When you see the connected camera it becomes something very concrete. The sky itself already is quite abstract. Especially if you frame it.
This project is connected to another project I made this summer. When I was in the Silvretta area in the mountains I did another work with a fixed installed outdoor camera. The company that installed this camera (Illwerke Tourismus) uses it to have live images on the web. The area is, as I already mentioned earlier, a popular hiking area. The website of this area advertises the beauty of the landscape with the live images. My intervention was to change the angle of the camera. For one week you saw a close-up of a lake if you visited the web page.
The colors of the lake change constantly. It was like a study of the color range of the lake. On the website every minute the image was changing. Under the image — like in a painting in a museum — I put my name and a small work description.
Then I found out that many other websites, mainly sites for weather forecasts are using the images of this webcam. For a while the close up of the lake, a rather abstract image in various blue, green, grey variations, was all over their sites (laughs).
And you were allowed to do it?
I wrote to the operators of the webpage and asked them for help and the permission to do it. The webcam is installed high up on the roof of a building. I needed access to the camera. I also wanted it to last for a while. First some people in the company were against it but others liked the idea. So after a while they agreed to do it and I was really happy about it.
I can imagine people would object to it, even if it’s beyond me, as to why…
There were different reactions. Most of the people really liked it. But others complained. I got some hate mails…
Oh no…
Yeah (laughs).
So people were upset, because they go to the webpage to watch the landscape every day, or what?
Some people really go there every day and look at it while they are having a cigarette…and they don’t want to see my pictures there (laughs).
Lastly, can you tell me something about the glass balloons?
It’s a series of sculptures titled “bubblegums”. I wanted to capture the moment of blowing a gum bubble in a threedimensional way. The idea was to make the moment before the bubble pops last forever. Since I couldn’t conserve a real gum bubble I made sculptures that look like a real bubblegum bubbles. They are made out of glass, blown like a bubble gum. I worked together with a glass blower. He made the bubbles after my instructions and then I painted them.
Related links
Liddy Scheffknecht’s homepage
Interview by Anders Khan Bolin, @strayl1ght
