The Wolves Come Out At Night...

... but only in a certain light.

Can you find them?


I made an aluminium foil moon. Super complex, I know. But, it's interactive art! if you get yourself a torch and shine its light on the moon at just the right angles, you'll find two wolves. One can be found when lit from the bottom right and is made of shadows, the other can be found when lit from the top right and is made of light. Sounds unconventional, right? It's a bit of a challenge to get that angle right, even for me, and I doubt those wolves can be found at all without a little help from the examples in the lower left and right corner...

This art works because the aluminium foil has very specific wrinkles, which cast very specific shadows when lit at a very specific angle. There are also a lot of wrinkles which do not contribute to the wolves' outlines at all, but are there to give the moon some structure and foil (pun intended) wolf hunters. I find it funny that, normally, you want to put a spotlight on a piece of art so that viewers can see every detail of it. Not here. This artwork needs some darkness as well to show what makes it so special. Not all darkness is evil, I guess. As long as those wolves do not come after you to eat you, haha!


The materials I used are quite simple: cardboard, canvas (30x30 cm), acrylics, hotglue, and - guess what - aluminium foil. You can see some WIPs below (note that half the items you see in the photos weren't used, I just have a messy desk):



I cut the cardboard into the shape of a crescent moon and glued bits of aluminium foil to it, and then glued that to the canvas. My trusty desk light with flexible neck (very important) was put at the angle of attack I needed for the light. I shaped the aluminium foil, added or cut away pieces when needed, until its shadows formed a wolf. If felt a lot like sculpting somehow.
In the WIP,s you can see I sketched a wolf on the canvas. The idea was I would shape the aluminium to follow the outline of that sketch, but that soooo didn't work. Eventually, I just fooled around freely until I got something I liked. You can see the first wolf take shape in the second WIP picture. When the wolf was finished, I painted the canvas black (should do that first next time, though) and I also added some watered down acrylics to the aluminium foil to give its wrinkles depth. 
The second wolf was added much later. There was a lot of moon I didn't use, so I thought 'can't I add a second beast?'. So I did. I like this one much more, as I think the first wolf is a bit scrawny.