Your knowledge need to help me make my desired final piece! Please :)

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Plasmatic

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Hello all!

I need your amazing knowledge in this area. I'm doing a show for my first BA Fine Art project, and I have an idea of what I want my final piece to be, but not the knowledge to do it, which sucks.

Basically, I know from my limited experience in the darkroom that the paper used is light sensitive and goes black when light hits it? What I want to do is show a big piece of paper that turns black over the course of the day- so much, much, much slower than usual. Is there any way I can slow down the reaction: a chemical, a clear covering of some sorts?

Failing that, anyway it could work in the opposite way? A blackened paper fading slowly over a day.

I know I sound like the world's biggest noob, but I've only a very basic, sixth form knowledge of this area, and would be very grateful for any help or ideas you have!

Thanks so much guys :) x
 
Photographic paper takes quite a while to change colour, so it should be possible for it to change throughout a day, but the Ilford multigrade stuff I have actually goes pink/purple when exposed like that.

I actually did a similar project where I posted a sheet of paper with opaque writing on a piece of acetate attached so that the reciever had a message that was only visible for a limited amount of time.

Your best bet would be to get your hands on a few sheets of paper and do some tests :)
 
Are you going to expose on image onto the paper or do you just want the whole sheet to go black?

Either way you'll need to expose it first. The only way I can think to make it develop that slowly would be to use a seriously weak developing solution because this is what makes the exposed part of the paper turn black. I guess that if you make it too weak though you may have trouble exposing the image fully. I think you'll need to do some trial and error.

The trickiest thing you're going to face on your display is that the developing part is going to have to be under safe light conditions, so you either need to have a light proof tent for people to view it in or give them a tour of the dark room.
 
Actually, if you just want a black sheet you might get away with putting the paper in a weak solution in a normally lit room. That way it would expose and develop at the same time (done it by accident myself by turning on the darkroom lights while the paper was still in the developer, cue instant black sheet).

If you're using a really weak solution I think you're going to have to find a way of agitating the developer to prevent localised exhaustion.
 
The largest source of photographic paper I can think of would be the ilford 50" wide rolls, which depending on your size requirements you could maybe overlap? They are huge in length, so using tis method you could get a pretty massive sheet of paper

As Kev says you are likely to need some form of agitation to avoid uneven development, and if exposing and developing at the same time you might want to make sure your light source is as even as possible across the print surface, other wise you could end up with the part nearest your lights going darker first

Another problem you may have depending on how long you want the print to take is oxidation of the developer as it contacts the air. The larger the print the quicker this will happen as the surface area of the developer will be greater. Perhaps performing the whole thing in some kind of clear perspex box, which you could also stand upright so people don't have to be looking down at it could be made. You could also then periodically rotate or invert the box to provide your agitation, provided you could in some way secure the sheet in place in the box

Out of interest, how much are you budgeting for this, as the paper and chems could get quite expensive depending on how big you want to go
 
Only a thought but an uneven development might actually work quite well artistically.

Andy
 
Can you tell I'm an engineer and not an artist?
 
An optimist's glass is half full, a pessimist's glass is half empty and an engineer wants to know why the glass hasn't been designed to hold the correct amount of liquid within the known parameters.(y)

Andy
 
(y)
 
What is your piece meant to say?

Or is it just a bit of paper turning black?
 
Wow, I didn't expect so many replies! Thanks so much everyone. I'm just off to properly digest each post thoroughly, but to answer a couple of questions I saw:

Budget- £40, but could go over, and as an art student (I'm at Saint Martins), I have some good, cheap places for this sort of thing.

Space- It's an open, gallery space. There are a couple of cupboard sized rooms I could grab and make dark or whatnot, but ideally want to show something in the main gallery, which is quite lit up.

And, fixedimage, yeah I guess it is just a 'bit of paper' turning black. But the concept behind it is the idea of how we don't notice minor changes in detail until they accumulate into one major change that is very different- eg, the black to white. It's been a big project and this is just one of the elements ;)

Thanks again guys :)
 
So it's going to be all black and not have an image on it?

Thinking back to raathistle's perspex box idea. Although it's like to smash your budget it might be possible to build a perspex box (or a box with a perspex lid) and cover it with film to block out the room light (you can buy it for covering florescent tubes to turn them into safelights for the darkroom). That way you could expose them image in a darkroom the same as normal, load it into the box full of weak solution and then put the lid on (covered in the safelight filter) and take it into the gallery to develop.
 
Are any of the non-conventional exposure chemistries more suitable? i.e. slower and/or easier to slow down.
 
for £40 you're going to be fairly limited in the size of image you can make, unless you're happy sticking multiple smaller sheets together. You are still going to need some kind of container for the developer, which at your budget I would suggest is going to be a big tray, so people will have to look down at the developing sheets.
Agitation wise you could probably get away with giving it a bit of a nudge every half hour or so, but I would suggest you do some small scale experiments first using different strength of developer solution. If you really wanted to you could then leave the print unfixed, and watch as the image very slowly vanishes, making it a 2 part piece, but over a much longer timescale
Have you thought of producing a timelapse video of the developing print throughout the course of the day, might be quite cool with people moving in front of it all day
 
Plasmatic said:
Wow, I didn't expect so many replies! Thanks so much everyone. I'm just off to properly digest each post thoroughly, but to answer a couple of questions I saw:

Budget- £40, but could go over, and as an art student (I'm at Saint Martins), I have some good, cheap places for this sort of thing.

Space- It's an open, gallery space. There are a couple of cupboard sized rooms I could grab and make dark or whatnot, but ideally want to show something in the main gallery, which is quite lit up.

And, fixedimage, yeah I guess it is just a 'bit of paper' turning black. But the concept behind it is the idea of how we don't notice minor changes in detail until they accumulate into one major change that is very different- eg, the black to white. It's been a big project and this is just one of the elements ;)

Thanks again guys :)
Click to expand...

Sounds good.

The main problem I see with the idea is that it sounds like you want a very gradual change to happen which might not really be visible to the human eye over a period of anything less than a few hours, thus it would involve people revisiting your installation to see a change.

Maybe not quite what your looking for but what I immediately think of is a stack of sheets of photo paper with just the top one exposed to the light and turning the pinky purple colour that photo paper will when left out in the light then every hour or so (however long it takes for the paper to discolour sufficiently) the top sheet is removed to reveal a pristine white sheet underneath. (not sure if the top sheet would actually do a good enough job of shielding the next sheet down and the stack of sheets might need to be contained in a tray to stop light getting to the edges of the sheets).

The removed sheet could even be placed into dev to blacken it or laid out in a grid with the next sheet off next to it and so on, these would continue to discolour and the 'gradual changes' would be visible in the slightly different tone each sheet would have as it had always been exposed to light for a little bit longer (or shorter) than the sheet beside it.

It is possible to buy photographic emulsions which can be applied to things to make them photosensitive. Someone in my year a few years ago painted the emulsion onto slate then printed onto the slate using an enlarger, I don't know what the sensitivity of these things is like but it might afford you more flexibility than working with standard photo paper would.
 
Lots of smaller sheets stuck together but developing at different rates would be interesting as you would get an array of different shadings throughout the day.

Andy
 
Two gelatin suspensions.. one of starch, one of iodine.. slow migration through the gelatin resulting in a black layer on the interface? Not even sure if this would work, and would require a lot of experimentation.

Personally, I'd look to remove as many variables as possible.. ditch photochemistry and light-involving reactions altogether. Find a chemist and see if s/he can suggest a reaction that could produce a clear-to-black or white-to-black effect and can be controlled to extend the process over 8 hours or so.

Perhaps an oxidation reaction with a semi-permeable coating to slow gas exchange.


If all else fails.. a white background with a double-walled glass pane in front of it concealed by the frame. Use a peristaltic pump to introduce a black dye in small quantities throughout the day.
 
Does it have to be black it changes to?
If you expose a piece of photo paper in a pinhole camera for long enough (1-6 months) you're left with a fairly faint image burned onto it. You could do something like put a really big piece of paper in a really big box with a hole an inch or so wide, so it would change colour (and maybe burn what it's pointing at onto the paper if you're not careful). Instead of just having a big bit of paper in a room, people would have to look through the hole to see it - that way there's something for them to interact with, which, in my experience as a design student, is always better than just a flat object.

Just an idea - it obviously needs a good bit of work & might go outside your budget, but I thought I'd chip in with something.

-J
 
Joenail said:
Does it have to be black it changes to?
If you expose a piece of photo paper in a pinhole camera for long enough (1-6 months) you're left with a fairly faint image burned onto it. You could do something like put a really big piece of paper in a really big box with a hole an inch or so wide, so it would change colour (and maybe burn what it's pointing at onto the paper if you're not careful). Instead of just having a big bit of paper in a room, people would have to look through the hole to see it - that way there's something for them to interact with, which, in my experience as a design student, is always better than just a flat object.

Just an idea - it obviously needs a good bit of work & might go outside your budget, but I thought I'd chip in with something.

-J
Click to expand...

Now I like that, great idea.

Andy
 
Joenail said:
Does it have to be black it changes to?
If you expose a piece of photo paper in a pinhole camera for long enough (1-6 months) you're left with a fairly faint image burned onto it. You could do something like put a really big piece of paper in a really big box with a hole an inch or so wide, so it would change colour (and maybe burn what it's pointing at onto the paper if you're not careful). Instead of just having a big bit of paper in a room, people would have to look through the hole to see it - that way there's something for them to interact with, which, in my experience as a design student, is always better than just a flat object.

Just an idea - it obviously needs a good bit of work & might go outside your budget, but I thought I'd chip in with something.

-J
Click to expand...

Schrödinger's camera, "Can you tell what is is yet?"

If you're viewing it, you're blocking the light.. only by not viewing it can it become something to view.
 
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