Here comes the sun 1.0
to Sacha van den Haak & Felix van Dam’s windowThe most important question raised after our search for the perfect light drawing utensil: What to draw when we finally have a perfectly working light ‘brush’?
In our initial talks we discussed the possibility of influencing the light sensitive emulsion on our screen with the sun. Would the emulsion harden when the window lies underneath a tree? Would the sun ‘draw’ the changing shadow patterns of the leaves onto our screen? We were about to find out!
We used Felix’s favorite book to hold down the cardboard.
It was a beautiful day. There where no clouds and it was about 28 degrees. We prepared a silkscreen beforehand and took it outside. We had covered the back of the window with cardboard so it wouldn’t be lit from underneath. We would test the time needed by the sun to harden the emulsion with steps of 5 seconds to a minute. These steps consist of simply sliding a piece of cardboard over the window. When we had a full minute we took the screen downstairs and washed it clean. Only thing was, we couldn’t. The window had been fully lit. Even the strip that had been exposed to the sun for 5 seconds was entirely hardened!
Walking down the stairs to wash out the window proved too much effort.
The sun worked, you could say. It worked even better than a lighting table (which would take approximately three minutes to fully lighten a screen). But if you want to capture the shadows and see the changing sunlight, the lighting times would have to be a lot shorter, or the emulsion should be less sensitive.