Gaze shifting snow heads
The winter of 2014-2015 brought with it a lot of snow. I spent some time shoveling but spent much more time walking and biking around looking for more ways to have fun with all the snow.
Drawing on cars was time consuming, I wanted a kind of snow stamp that could allow me to leave my mark and move on quickly. That led me to creating a few simple shapes out of cardboard until it became obvious I had to make 3D snow heads.
Carefully pressing a mannequin headfirst into the snow took just a moment. To enhance the effect the luminance is reversed in these images. Because light typically comes from above, our brains are wired to expect upper surfaces to be brighter.
Pressing the head in facing one direction made it appear to face the opposite direction. In this photo you can see the accidental imprint of my gloves as I pressed the head into the snow.
For this one I coupled positive luminance version of my hand with the negative version of the snow in the background.
By now you probably only have one question on your mind, why did I happen to have a mannequin head lying around? But of course it was to be subjected to Loud Bicycle horns in binaural microphone recording experiments for Loud Bicycle.