After a decade as a touring, temporary public realm installation, light artists Matthew Rosier and Jonathan Chomko’s ‘Shadowing’ has taken up long-term residence in Doncaster, and the artists are hoping it will be the first of many.
For ILP members with long memories, light artists Matthew Rosier and Jonathan Chomko’s ‘Shadowing’ public art project first featured in Lighting Journal all the way back in 2017 (‘Shadow Catchers’, October 2017, vol 82, no 9).
The public art installation works by recording the shadows of those who walk underneath a streetlight and then plays them back to the next person, with the aim to create a bit of fun and interactivity within the public realm.
One of the ILP’s first pandemic webinars in 2020, ‘Lighting Public Spaces Post Pandemic’, in September of that year (‘Shadow economy’, vol 85 no 8), argued how, while not a solution to the complex social, psychological and economic challenges being wrought by those difficult times, this type of public art provided welcome light relief within the public realm, while at the same time enhancing wellbeing and community cohesion.
One of those watching was Perry Hazel, business manager, asset management services at London Borough of Southwark and now of course ILP President, which led to a Shadowing installation being on a light column just outside Tate Modern on London’s South Bank (‘Lightening lockdown’, March 2021, vol 86 no 3).
PERMANENT INSTALLATION
Scroll forward three years and, from what has been for the past decade a touring, temporary fixture, a Shadowing installation has been installed in Doncaster city centre for more than a year. The plan is it will now hopefully become a long-term addition to the South Yorkshire city’s public realm.
The piece was commissioned by Doncaster Council and DoncasterCreates with the support of former ILP President Fiona Horgan, now of course at London Borough of Islington, and her former lighting team and Mike Stubbs at ARTBOMB. Matthew is hopeful, too, it will not be the last long-life version of the installation.
‘For a long time, Jonathan and I had envisioned Shadowing as a permanent piece somewhere,’ Matthew tells Lighting Journal. ‘But we were limited by funding, testing and technology; we first made Shadowing in 2014 and since then it has always been a temporary art installation, even if it has toured as widely as York, Tokyo, Tel Aviv, Paris and Austin in Texas, among other places.
‘In Southwark, it was more permanent but still only there for about six months. So I am very pleased we have got to realise the idea of a long-life structure with Doncaster,’ he adds.
The new installation, called Shadowing V2, has been on site since the summer of 2022. Given how lighting technology has advanced in the decade since Shadowing was first created, unsurprisingly, the long-life version of the installation has had some modifications made to it.
‘We worked with Ark Lighting, which is also based in Yorkshire and has its fabrication studio in Oldham. Working with them, we redesigned it from the ground up,’ explains Matthew.
‘We added some important fundamentals, including the ability for it to be temperature controlled so that it can be located in both very hot and cold climates for up to 10 years. For a permanent fixture, it needs to have very good remote operation, so a very stable internet connection. It has mobile SIM cards in it, and a data plan.
‘Then there needs to be an operating system where we can see what’s going on – there is a camera in there that we can access remotely. As well as being able to see what the software is doing all the time.
‘We also did a general update of all of the hardware. The progression in projector technology between now and 2012 has been amazing. There is now laser technology, which means there is no longer a need for bulb replacements (although the whole projector unit will normally need replacing after about 10 years). It generates a lot less heat, which is of course incredibly important for temperature control.
‘Just as importantly, we’re now able to get a much bigger image on the ground. That was always a limitation of the original Shadowing. Most pedestrian streetlights are at about 5-6m max, which with the old kit and a standard lens projector gave you a relatively small image on the ground. So it was quite intimate, which was nice, but we also wanted to open it up to a more interactive experience. We’ve now doubled the on-the-ground interaction, and it is much brighter,’ he adds.
‘Shadowing is and always has been simply a fun way to change the public realm. Our vision was always to use technology as a means to connect strangers and allow – and create – moments of interaction and performance in public spaces, which I think everyone would agree have become much more isolated. Even if we’re in large crowds, we’re often these days much more isolated, everyone is on their own journey and plugged into their own world,’ Matthew says.
- This is an abridged version of the article that appears in the July/August edition of Lighting Journal. Click on the link to the edition to read the full article.