You can also purchase some of these as individual greeting cards at Red Bubble. or Zazzle.com. Click on the image below to link to the Red Bubble site and then click on the image. Or contact me if you would like a different image on a card, I can upload it.

 

 

 

S tring theory, one theoritical effort of modern physicists to integrate the two high level scientific theories (relativity and quantum) that explain our universe, has developed mathematical equations which find resolution by assuming the existence of more dimensions than the ones we know. One-dimension, a point; two dimensions, a plane, three dimensions, a solid; and the fourth dimension, time.

When I read about this I experienced a feeling of discomfort.

We use the terms one-dimensional, two-dimensional, three-dimensional and four-dimensional as if they are real things. But I find there is no such thing as a point (1-D) or a plane (2-D)—these are just concepts we created to describe things, to communicate with each other or to make things.

(Three-dimensional, a solid, also its not real—by the "time" I have used the word, say refrigerator, the fourth-dimension, time, has happened to the "three dimensional object, it has moved in space, it has changed in its molecular composition, etc. The refrigerator is not a thing but a process in space-time.)

I saw my discomfort about string theory—If these dimensions we commonly know are not real, how can there be more of these ‘unreal dimensions’?

Shadow: The Thing

And then I thought about shadow. A shadow is a real thing. We can see it, and when we describe it to each other , we find that we see the same thing. Shadow is an empirical phenomenon, observed and verified by all cultures throughout history as a thing. And it is two dimensional, perhaps the only two dimensional thing that is real for us.

Sha-Do: The Project

Could I see myself as I might appear to a being which experienced me as two dimensional in our four dimensional space-time. This is different than asking how would I experience this universe if I were two dimensional, such as suggested by Abbott in “Flatland”, an exercise which explored this conceptually with words. Its not how I would experience, but how I would be experienced.

Sha-Do project was an exercise for me to understand this better. These forms are how the camera saw my shadow. While each image is true to the shape of the shadow and made with a hand held camera in natural light, I have added color in an effort to move away from the experience of the image as a photographic record of human experience. Rather I want to experience the image as I might appear to a being that experienced me as two dimensions.

Photography

We often think about a photograph as a representation of something REAL. If we do not recognize the image we say “What is it REALLY” because we believe the photograph is showing something REAL, we just don’t recognize it from this angle or in this lighting. We believe that photography is a visual record of an event that really happened, and while the photograph shows the event from one particular perspective, it is still a moment of something that really happened.

And now with Adobe Photoshop the word "Photoshopped" in popular culture means that an electronic image that was a record of something REAL has now been altered by the computer

Some may look at these images and say “They don't look REAL, they have been photoshopped."

Consider this: when we see a photograph of a galaxy from outer space or even of Saturn or Jupiter or a photograph of a cell in our body, we usually enjoy the image and don't bother to think “how did they make that image?” However these are not the same kind of photographs as the snapshots you take. Images from outer space are radio waves which have been converted to a visual image. Cells may be seen because of dye or colored lighting. But scientists have no problem understanding that these "fake images” are actually real limages.

If I took a photograph of my stomach with the lens about 1 inch away, showed you the print and said "this is a photograph of me" you would probably not recognize it as a photograph of me unless I explained how I took the picture. In the same sense think that we are looking at a photograph that is a an image of me but we do not know under what conditions or from what perspective it was taken. That unknown is part of the experience and your answer is as good as mine.

In this project I am not looking to record real moments but hypothetical ones. How might I look to an alien being that experienced me as two dimensional. In spite of the color, these are the actual mages. None of them have been distorted in the sense of changing proportion, or making the image look weird by altering the shadow image. The color is used to enhance the shadow image and to create visual interest.