Viewers can select any combination of five buttons and then Cast a Shadow, which activates a combination of lighting devices and returns a digital snapshot of the resulting shadow. Each combinations of buttons produce different lighting conditions. Certain random combinations will provide clues which lead to a mysterious Sixth button. The Sixth button illuminates hidden secrets in an alcove of the apparatus. In addition to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, the Shadowserver conjures the sinister aspects of noir and the industrial technologies of the electric light and motion picture.
All digital images are shadows.
In contrast to the physical world, shadows in the online world do not measure time and lack the physical referent of the human body. Our challenge is to navigate through this landscape without landmarks. The various forms of data that are interlinked and intermingled through the Internet have created a new terrain that is constantly reconfiguring itself. The degree to which the shape and density of the data, the locations of specific information and the very nature of this new kind of space itself are great unknowns aligns us with previous periods of great discovery in our history. After a short period in which it seemed that the land masses had been mapped, the seas circumnavigated, and the planet reduced to a Big Blue Marble, we return to state of exploring the unknown.