Light and Shadow is an Intermedia arts project created by artists and collaborators John Toth and John Valentino.  The motivation behind this project comes from the writing of Friedrich Nietzsche, “Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future”, where Nietzsche describes the fallacy of thinking of “good” and “evil” as a “thing in itself”. Instead, he places these values as momentary insights within a chaotic sea of experiences.  The installation of Light and Shadow proposes to present a “playful structure” for experiencing the ideals of the Pan American Exhibition of 1906 against the ideals of contemporary culture. 

Within a sea of fabric and photographic montage, we will create a two-room exhibition that uses the latest technologies as artistic tools for practice.  For this project, we used new technologies in digital photography and video, internet databases of relevant media and live teleconferencing that projects into a multi-room fabric installation using video projectors and monitors.

Our presentation includes a vast collection of gallery images from the Pan American exhibition, running concurrently at the Burchfield Center , along with original art works.  We also use sound and music from the Pan American exhibition and original related contextual sources.

On-line participants would submit contextually related images, text and sounds on a Pan American theme that would be layered into the installation. Our theme would explore the nature of change that has occurred from the beginning of the Age of Electricity to the present state of technology and a look at future dreams and aspirations.  We would also explore the history of technology using equipment past and present.