GMU:Drawing: the natural-scientific gaze/Adriana M

“Man is a microcosm, or a little world, because he is an extract from all the stars and planets of the whole firmament, from the earth and the elements; and so he is their quintessence.” Paracelsus

“Therefore, we may consequently state that: this world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related.” Plato, Timaeus

Drawing with light

For the Greeks, the shadow was a metaphor for the soul. They thought it was possible to recognize the soul of a man by looking at his shadow.

The aim of this Project is to try to bring together science and art by looking at different samples or specimens, natural or artificial, through the microscope and then by the enlargement of the original images –exploring the effects of light in relation to the objects-, create a macrocosm from a microcosm.

Macrocosm and microcosm is an ancient Greek Neo-Platonic schema of seeing the same patterns reproduced in all levels of the cosmos, from the largest scale (macrocosm or universe-level) all the way down to the smallest scale (microcosm or sub-sub-atomic or even metaphysical-level). In the system the midpoint is Man, who summarizes the cosmos.

I will start selecting some images that I captured with the microscope. I will simplify the shapes and cut them to use it as a stencil. After collecting some stencils I will place them inside a cube and use a source of light to reflect their shadows on different walls.

To do this, I will build two boxes (cubes), one of them with translucent walls.

The translucent box will work as a canvas to draw all the different shadows reflected there. I will try to capture the soul of the specimens bringing it from the smallest scale, to the midpoint –cosmos–; having as a result, a new landscape on each wall.

The second box will work as a lamp. I will cut out each side with the pattern I got from the first box. When turning it on, the shadows will appear everywhere in the room, bringing the soul of the collected specimens from the midpoint to a largest scale –macrocosm.

The experiment will work as a microscope by itself, enlarging souls.

Shadow

Box of light

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