developing the camera obscura, by hanging tracing paper to abstract the projection.
Watching the only movement, which in this case was the clouds. These images are up-side-down, just to really confuse everyone.
here you can see the 8mm diametre hole and the image is of the street below and around.
For those who know Folkestone, the up-side-down trees are the top of the Bayle.
Getting in between, obscuring the camera obscurer
July 4, 2011
This is a photo (long exposure) of my shadow blocking the projection of the camera obscura in my studio. I painted the floor white where the edge of the projection lands to help the clarity of the image
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My studio is currently blacked out of all light, except through one hole. It is exactly the same as a camera or an eye. All vision perceived is via the phenomena of camera obscura; the weirdness of the light passing through a hole and somehow projecting itself again against the walls, film, photographic paper or retina.
When photgraphing the image for the sake of documentation, I became aware that the camera could have its’ moment of perception prolonged to 30 seconds or even indefinatley. This is unlike our eye and our rate of perception. We can blink to still an image into our heads, but we cannot do what the camera does. So I have begun to explore the possibility that photographs are not an honest represenation of reality, but are infact utterly unnatural. Life does not stop. If you look at a photo of a child, for example, they never stay still like they do in a photo (unless asleep), but the freeze-frame enables us to see an essence of that child that would be otherwise unpeceivable.
It reminds me alot of a Wim Wenders film, “Until the end of the world”, when the main character invents a machine that he ends up being able to view his own dreams on in film format.
I feel there is an overwhelming amount of photographic imagery around us, especially with facebook. We are being mind moulded into thinking photos are a true representation of reality. I see now that they are not. I am interested in developing this passgage of thinking.
Solstice in the studio
June 21, 2011
It’s a confusing sensation. But breath-taking and beautiful.
The amazing natural phenomena of a camera obscura
June 20, 2011
It works and is quite mesmerizing.
I have simply blacked out my studio (on Tontine street) and I drilled an 8mm hole in the wooden blackout board over the window and like a miracle I can see the street outside, right down to the bottom and I can see people walking by with red umbrellas and vans driving past, as the vibrations of them are felt throught the building, because it is now and it is absolutely real, its happening, like a film on the ceiling and the back walls, but it is also going on simutaneously outside. Amazing.
On the back wall it is also incredible, but then a seagull flies by and its makes the reality connect, slightly!
These are my first experiments. Tomorrow (the solstice), I am going in to perfect it, with 7 different hole sizes, blackout fabric from FHODS (thanks Peter Hesleden) and I am also painting the solstice part of the floor work; ‘Optimum light’. A good time to be an artist.
‘Suncatcher 1′ installation of cotton thread, light. 4th May 2011 at 4pm
Suncatcher
May 30, 2011
I strung white cotton from the window to the place the light was falling for 4pm in my studio on the 4th May 2011.
I had previously drawn around the light from th ewindow on the floor every hour, then painted them in.
Both painted and real pools of light can be seen in the above image.
I called this piece Suncatcher, because as the sun passes through the hour, it is caught by the string for a fleeting moment.
photogram versus photograph
May 24, 2011
“In their simplicity, photograms give the alphabet unfamiliar letters. What is seen has never been in a camera. Life itself is the image. Viewers sense it, they FEEL the difference.”
Adam Fuss (quoted in Shadow catchers’ handout)
