Posted on 02/27/2005 1:45:05 AM PST by Swordmaker
The Shroud of Turin has long confused, amazed, and befuddled both its critics and proponents. There are many issues surrounding the Shroud and the debate over its authenticity. This site will avoid most of those issues. This site contains the results of a crude experiment that could potentially explain how the Shroud was produced. For centuries no one has been able to explain how a photonegative image of a man could be three-dimensionally encrypted onto linen by medieval forgers unable even to appreciate the completeness of their own art. The Shadow Theory postulates that such an image could be created using only painted glass and sunlight.
Theory and Experiment
While pursuing graduate studies at Liberty University in the year 2000, N. D. Wilson first encountered the Shroud of Turin in a lecture by Dr. Gary Habermas. Using the solution patterns of G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, Wilson attempted to work through a "paradigm shift" in the world of current theories of Shroud forgery. Such theories simultaneously fail to account for the complexity of the image and the simplicity of technique required for a forgery to be believably attributed to a medieval.
The image on the Shroud is dark on a light background. Previous theories had all attempted to explain how linen could be darkened without the use of chemicals, stains, or paints. Wilson wondered if it would be possible to lighten the already dark linen, leaving only a dark image behind.The simplest means of lightening linen, available to all men throughout time, is to bleach it with sunlight. Wilson believed that if an image of a man were painted on glass with a light shade of paint, placed over darker linen, and left beneath the sun, a dark image would be left on a light background. More importantly, he believed a dark and light inversion would take place, creating a photonegative. Wherever light paint had been used, the linen would be shaded from the sun and left dark and unbleached. Wherever the darker shade of linen had been left exposed, the sun would bleach the cloth light. In addition, it was also believed that because the sun would be exposing the linen from approximately one hundred and eighty degrees, a crude three dimensional image would be created.
Several years later he decided to test his theory, so he met with Dr. Scott Minnich, a scientist friend, for advice on structuring the experiment.
Phase I
A line-up of faces would be painted on glass with white paint, placed over linen and exposed beneath the sun for differing periods of time. Different artists and non-artists would paint the faces and various paint thicknesses would be used. The goal for this phase was to select a single painting to be used to produce several images for comparison. A window painted in less than an hour by David Beauchamp, a non-artist, was selected. It initially produced an image while aligned parallel to the sun’s path and exposed for ten days.
Phase II
The Beauchamp painting would expose two additional images. The first image would be exposed perpendicular to the sun’s path. As temperatures had dropped, and the summer was fading, it would be left exposed for fifteen days. The second image would be exposed beneath a stationary sun lamp for approximately 140 hours.
Phase III
All of the images created would be photographed in the studio of Mark Lamoreaux for comparisons of the negatives. The three-dimensionality of a faux-shroud would be compared to that of the Turin Shroud.
Finis
It was found that even a crudely painted piece of glass could produce a photonegative image three-dimensionally encoded onto linen. The images produced by the Beauchamp painting did not match the finesse of the original, but aptly demonstrated the viability of the technique.
Oil paint on glass, produced by David Beauchamp in roughly forty-five minutes while watching stand-up comedy. This painting was the most successful and was used to produce three different images on linen.
To see the rest of the images, CLICK HERE
To read N.D. Wilson's answers to frequently asked questions about his technique, CLICK HERE.
More on the Shadow technique of recreating the Shroud of Turin PING!
This is the website where the N. D. Wilson explains how it was done... more pictures, including 3D renderings.
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Interesting. I didn't realize that medieval people had windowpane style glass available.
Man! I'd avoid that comedian next time.
I really get sick and tired of sites like these. There have been hundreds of explanations of how the shroud was created, yet no one, I repeat, no one can duplicate the Shroud exactly. With thousands of years of technological advancements in science, I will not be happy until someone can precisely duplicate the Shroud exactly, using technology from the correct time period. I do not want to hear that it is possible until it can be proved.
Saw the website. The man's irreverence is egregious. ("Watching stand-up comedy," "pirate image.") Swordmaker, what are your thoughts on the length discrepancy of the front and back images? He mentioned it on his faq page, I don't believe I've ever seen it discussed here. (Could be wrong about that!)
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This technique is apparently such a bleaching process... however, bleaching from light exposure does not stop. Wilson shadowed certain portions of his linen and exposed the rest through the glass... remove the glass and the rest of the linen should "catch-up" and bleach out as well. The shroud image is now at least 700 years old and shows no signs of having the image bleach out.
Have you ever heard of the 1875 locust plague in the US? Interesting story. In todays dollars, it was a $162 billion loss. The locust here went extinct and no-one is sure why.
That's the part the article explains.
The differences go away when you map the body onto the draped cloth. Experiments conducted by researchers who placed human volunteers on shroud like cloths, mapped the contiguous points of their bodies vertically collimated and found similar length differences.
Prof. ssa Emanuela Marinelli- Co-authored with Alessandro Cagnazzo and Prof. Giulio Fanti a study on this very subject: Computerized Anthropometric Analysis of the Man of the Turin Shroud . This is a PDF file and you will need Acrobat Reader to read it.
I assure you that forensic anthropologists have examined the image on the shrouud and are convinced it is of an actual human body.
Wouldn't the place where the pieces met leave some kind of imprint on the pattern?
Or would the waves or lumps in the glass?
This seems like something to check.
But the hypothetical artist would have to understand what he was atempting to paint on glass... adjusting his paint opacity inversely to distance from shroud surface and using the glass's transparency in place of dark paint shadow. This is NOT an intuitive thing to do. Wilson's artist knew what he was attempting to accomplish.
The "photograph" that Wilson produced with his technique is exactly that: a photo-graph - a picture written with light. The image on the shroud shows NO light artifacting... shadows, etc. Its artificiality is very apparent in the mesa like appearance of the 3D effect because the gradient of the paint opacity is artificial.
I am willing to bet that Wilson's sun-bleached photographs will disappear quite rapidly with time and exposure to light because the unbleached linen that comprises his image will bleach out.
To "duplicate" the shroud's image, the proposed example has to meet many criteria to be deemed successful... Wilson's contender meets only two of about 20 requirements.
Checking is unnecessary... the Shroud's image has been published and examined minutely... no artifacting of overlapping or butted together glass panes has been observed.
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