Tucked away in a laboratory in the UC Berkeley robotics department, a small light-proof box containing several secret objects - some dynamic, others perfectly still - is wired to the Internet and awaiting an audience. This is the ShadowServer, a telerobotic Web art project brought online this week by UC Berkeley professor Ken Goldberg.
Via an elegant Web interface, online viewers interact with the objects by selecting a combination of lights to turn on and off inside the box. Seconds after hitting the "Cast a Shadow" button, a digital snapshot of the silhouettes created by the objects under the user's chosen lighting condition appears on the site.
The ShadowServer's naturally grayscale images are surreal and mysterious, and imbedded in the piece is a Myst-like puzzle - solving it sets a revealing lighting combination.
"Electric light is a pure communications medium precisely because it has no content," says Goldberg, paraphrasing a Marshall McLuhan quote posted on the ShadowServer homepage. "In this case, the medium is the message."
Goldberg pioneered telerobotic art on the Web as co-director of the groundbreaking Telegarden, Mercury Project, and Legal Tender pieces. While his previous projects put the control of complicated robot arms in the hands of the user, the ShadowServer provides remote access to one of the most basic electronic circuits imaginable - an electric lightbulb.
"All photographic images are based on shadows: patterns of light," Goldberg explains. "This is particularly true of digital images, which are generally replicas of replicas. And all the images on the Web are reproductions and therefore shadows," making all of the Web a ShadowServer, he says.
The team that built the ShadowServer included industrial engineering student Bobak Farzin with assistance from Eric Paulos and Josh Posamentier.
