The Institute for Invisibility Research
(Bordered by Enchantment, Fascination, Recovery and Rain Streets, Paradise East)

The Institute for Invisibility Research
Information

The Institute for Invisibility Research was formed on November 14, 1990 by Bianca Mosca: it is the largest Scientific Research Organisation of its type in Europe,embracing in particular Shadow Research; but also elements of Invisibility and Non-existance. Whilst the differing subjects retain their individual character, close links between them enable those studying to benefit from the widest possible range of information. Those interesting in joining the Institute can apply for a Handbook which provides a general outline and also a Practical Guide to the programme of Research.

For those interesting in the Interning Programme at the Institute please contact: Elizabeth Jenyon @ The Institute of Invisible Research, NW London Branch.

Institute History

The Institute was started in pretty much the same way as any other Institute: as an organisation for particular work, a business or administrative concern, united and constructed for a particular end and, in this case for Scientific and Romantic purposes.

As in any other Institute, there is a Head of the Board, a Court of Governors and a Bank of Administrative Officials: who arrange methodically the work carried out by the Researchers. There is however, one slight difference from other Institutes, the Head of the Board is Ms B. Mosca and the rest of the board (the Court and Officials) are a shadow board. When I say a shadow board, I mean a board made up of shadows - the board consists of projected shadows of her researchers. The shadows have and continue to be, recorded on to digital video cameras during the researchers working day, through a white screen in front of their desks, with two strong lights at points North North East and North North West behind them. The videos of the individuals shadows were then projected onto white plastic seats shaped like oversized steps around the board table. Their posture, stature and nervous quirks or habits were replayed and relived in a strange one dimensional dance in the half light of the boardroom whilst Bianca sat hypnotised by their strange body language.

Ms Mosca, born into a family of three girls, was independantly wealthy and of a nervous disposition, which her parents had called "extremely sensative to the world about her". One day much as narcisus who fell in love with his own reflection, Bianca came across a shadow - a shadow which stopped her in her tracks she was so mesmerised by the beauty of it. She sat and watched it for quite some time until it wavered and disappeared. She was so stunned, that she had forgotten to look up at the body which had cast the shadow. This shadow filled her every thought, the gentle serenity of it, the clean sharp truth of it, and she realised that if it took her her whole life she had to find the shadow and the body which had cast it.

She spent a number of years searching by herself, hanging out around the Institute of Possible Futures where she had first fallen in love with the shadow. She carried a camera and took thousands of photo's of cast shadows, which now line the reception walls of the Institute. As her obsession grew she would talk incessantly about the subtle nuances of slant/tilt, projected and self- shadows. She would no longer look people in the face but insist that they talk to her behind screens, believing that to look upon the solid three-dimensional physical presence of a person was to see nothing that could be trusted; but to look upon the empty space that was made by them disrupting lights path was a truth; that shadow was a truth of vision that was not socially constructed, or politically incorrect, but beyond the constraints of modern vision theory. Some 6 years later in 1990 she set up the Institute for Invisibility Research and employed a body of some 20 Staff to Research and note down their real life experiences with shadow.

In 1996 after the death of her parents the two remaining members of her family tried to have her committed for squandering the family fortune on something that would never exist. And despite knowing that everyone thought she was barking mad, the knowledge that she had committed herself to a life without love had not escaped her and was prevalent in her own mind - but love is blind and she could not stop her fruitless obsessive search as the shadows in her life had become more real than her life itself.

Bianca Mosca mysteriously disappeared on November 14th 1997 whilst out taking photographs of tourists shadows outside the Institute of Possible Futures. The last person to see her, was a student there, who said - "Yes, I saw her entering the Institute with someone..... no, I didn't see the person ....... only the flash of their shadow as they disappeared through the door before her".

The Institute continues to run and function under Trust money left by Bianca for "the continued Study for Visionary Truth". Below are some excerpts from her diary, followed by edited quotes from her researchers notes (a full research document containing all her diary notes can be purchased via the Internet from the Institute)

Monday 1st October

"He was just a shadow of his former self"

"To rest in the shadows"

"The shadowlands"

"He had a shadowy past"

Tuesday 9th October

"Yeah..........., I guess I don't know when it started, I mean, when do you know when it starts........................ an obsession. Does it start when you realise that is what it is, and you feed it, or does it start way, way before then, something you saw, something you heard, a gradual osmosis? And my obsession, kind of weird to have an obsession about something that is not tangible, something that is a hole in the flux, the disruption of the normal path of photons and I'm talking about the more energetic photons at that. If light is itself an energy that is something tangible, does that make shadow not tangilble - or does it have an energy of its own, what is it called?

Wednesday 18th October

"Black Shadows"

"The Five O'clock Shadow"

"The Shadow of Your Smile"

Thursday 26th October

"He stuck like a shadow"

"Me and my shadow"

"Shadow began scratching his vinyl"

Friday 3rd November

"Into the Shadow of the Valley of death they rode"

"Carried away by a moon shadow, moon shadow, moon shadow"

"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil."

"The Living Shadow"

Sunday 6th November

"Shadows and Fog"

"Lurking in the shadows"

"There is life in the Shadows"

"Fore Shadow"

Monday 7th November

I have been waiting for something lovely, dark and deep, sometimes looking for it at The Big Museum of Love and Drunkeness and The Butterfly Club. Occasionally I think I have found the object of my desire - out of the corner of my eye, off in my peripheral vision. Only to turn my head and find it has disappeared or changed shape into something unrecognisable, rather like the self-shadow of your breast cast against your body in the noon day sun, transforming from a gentle crescent to some amorphous lump creeping accross your body and disappearing around the corner. Such is the nature of love, in its purest intensity - governed and led by a very obstinate selectivity which discludes through lack or deficiency. If shadow is a deficiency of light, and that deficiency holds a fascination in itself, why can't the deficiency in love be as fascinating?

Monday 14th November

"Man is a dream of a Shadow"

"Shadow Box"

"Shadow Play"

"Shadow Pass"

Have you seen your mother baby, standing in the shadows?'

To answer some of these questions and more let's hear from some of the Researchers of 'The Institute':

Bash:

When we were in our 1st year at Lancaster, Pete and I entered a 5-a-side competition and called our team 'The Black Shadows' I seem to recall this may have had something to do with a popular Durex product of the time. If it didn't add any inches (the marketing strategy being that all white kids know black guys have huge whangers) at least it made us feel better about liking Donna Summer. We were a crap team, and there were no groupies. A while ago I purchased a pack of durex and they included a couple of freebies from their 'exotic' range. They must have the same marketing team around, because a red condom is just plain scary, and a blue one, although reminding me of Chelsea - not the best time to be thinking about 11 blokes - didn't make me feel like partying. Odd but true.

B. x

Sheena:

I am miserable. Maybe just because it has rained for 11 days in a row, and I haven't seen my shadow. There was this article in the New Yorker about the "Shadow Epidemic" which is Hepatitis C which is like HIV. Jan (my friend across the street) may very well have this C thing. It is very very bad. But she hasn't really talked about it and I am afraid to. There may be million and millions of people with it as it was in the blood supply in the 80's and it takes about a decade to come out and the test for it is fairly new. So much for that shadow.

Just sign me up for the shadow institute in shadow land. It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.

LOVE
Sheena

Maryanne:

"What a relief to hear from you!
I have always thought the idea of 'shades' was very beautiful, a ghostly shade, etc. There's a book of photos by an artist named Tim Moll of shadows in a haunted manor in Ireland which he captured as ghosts"

My favorite one is "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil."

xxoo
marie

Roy:

The Shadow of Your Smile" Theme song to THE SANDPIPERS a Liz Taylor movie 1966.

Mo'later, Love, Roy

Etienne:

I'm sorry about the late responce. I've had lots of work this week and coming after a virtual wasteland as it did, I have let other things slip.

In a virtual world shadows are a luxury. Shadows require light to come from a source, travel in a specific direction and have something along the way impede some of that flow. In a virtual space nothing has to be defined, all the choices are arbitrary. You can define an area of space as an object, more objects more number crunching work. For shadows you've got to define light as an object so it works out where every shaft is going and where it comes to rest. Shadows are really important if you want suspension of disbelief from your viewer. A lot of 3D work is about making shadows for things that aren't there, it's called a shadow pass. You can turn an objects shadow's on and off, you can have shadows cast for objects that are invisible, you can have negative light so that an objects shadow is brighter than the area around it.

Lots of love

Etienne

Sheena:

Shadow box (n.), Shadow Box (v.) Shadow land, Shadow puppets, 5 oclock shadow, Shadow him, Shad roe, shadblow, Shadow play, Fore shadow... That's all for now. I gotta go do some work.

More, later.
Love, sheenabeana

Michel:

Now I'm thinking about shadows rather than how to amortise charges associated with a container move. Thanks.

Anyway, what's the Italian for shadow, curris..co??? God knows, but didn't that dodgy photographer Ralph Gibson have a book out with that title. Maybe it meant dark and light because it was certainly full of very contrasty images, but, as I don't know Italian, it could mean anything. Just a thought. More later...........

Later:

When I think of Shadows I think of Cliff! Actually I don't. I think of Kafka, but I'm not sure there is a real connection there, but maybe you can argue invisibility, or as is the case with Ralph Ellisons (? Read it about 16 years ago) 'The Invisible Man' (about a black man in the US) the total lack of acknowledgement. Sorry I've got a meeting in an hour and my mind is pinging about.

A couple of quick ones, then I'll give it a bit of thought this evening.

The Stones 'Have you seen your mother baby, standing in the shadows'

Shadow boxing.

............Later.

M x

Emma:

in between crying my eyes out on the tube at the sadness of it, I noticed this ancient Greek quote said at a death: "Man is a dream of a shadow"

Love Emmaxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Lorraine:

"Fuck Off Shadow"

xx Lori

Tanya:

Movies:
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Sergei Paradjanov
Shadows and Fog by Woody Allen
The Shadow (a silly movie from 1994 with Alec Baldwin, Ian McKellen, et. al.)
Shadows by John Cassavetes
Shadows by Lon Chaney

Comics:
The Shadow series by William Gibson (Issue Titles: The Living Shadow, The Shadow Unmasks)

Songs:
Me and My Shadow (early 20th century ditty)
Dancing in the Shadows by The Rolling Stones
Complicated Shadows by Elvis Costello

Phrases:
cast a shadow
lurking in the shadows
fear one's shadow
to shadow someone

There's also a crazy website devoted to a game called Shadow Warrior which has a constellation of Dungeons and Dragons-esque Shadow Gods and Shadow Worlds.

Sounds like fun. I will send more.

Love,
Tanya

Etienne:

Shadows on an X-Ray are very scary indeed.

Characters in 3D computer games carry their shadows round with them. Their shadows are physical because its much simpler to have a flat plane with a character shaped silhouette on it attached to their feet than work out where the light is going to hit the floor. There isn't any light in computer games anyway!

See you on Monday.

E
x