Editing the Shadow Volume
BLDGBLOG has a fun write-up (by way of New Scientist) on a computer model put out by Niloy Mitra and Mark Pauly that facilitates designing three-dimensional objects based on what shadows you want to cast depending on what angle the object is lit from. There’s a five minute video at the link that is pretty amazing not just for the effects produced but the process itself, which they call “editing the shadow volume.”
The phrase itself made me fall in love with the concept before I even saw the video. Editing the Shadow Volume; it’s such a rich, pregnant phrase in so many ways beyond the explicit use here. Think about applying it to the Jungian Shadow, for instance. Editing the volume of your repressed personality traits to change the shape of what you project when illuminated.
But I digress. BLDGBLOG’s Geoff Manaugh shares some wonderful, incredibly vivid ideas for applying this tech on a much larger scale:
But what if we could do this with a glass tower in midtown Manhattan? Or if there was an elevator moving upward through an all-glass shaft, and as the lights in the lobby around it switch on and off, different—and often wildly unexpected—shadows are cast?
What the architectural possibilities of multiple-shadow casting design?
Think about a high-rise that lit from one direction either artificially or by the sun paints one shadow-picture, and from another direction paints another shadow, across the expanse of a cityscape. Would the projection of shadow volume change the evolution of that part of the city in any way? Would it affect the development of businesses and homes depending on the type of shadow cast, despite the individual ground-level citizen not being able to see it?
The whole thing fascinates me.