Report from the Shadowlands

Media Art as Interactive Science Communication of the Humanities

Abstract

This contribution presents the Umbra Machine and the Music Machine, two interconnected components of an interactive media art installation that formed the central piece of an exhibition investigating the motif of the shadow as a metaphor for individual creativity. The installation and its underlying concept operate at the intersection of humanities-oriented science communication and art based research. As an explicitly interactive media artwork, it explores whether comparatively neglected findings from humanities research — such as the positive conceptions of creativity and imagination articulated in literary texts around 1800 — can be investigated and, in particular, communicated through artistic methods and formats. The contribution therefore introduces an installation that enables participants to generate, interpret and, most importantly, transform shadow images as references to and representations of their own imagination, and to experience those transformations as sound.