Critical Light Pathways II 2010

06 Dec 2010 : The Drill Hall, Rushcutters Bay, Sydney, Australia

In part 2 of this project I worked with Sean Bacon. We used The Drill Hall as the chamber for a series of camera-obscura experiments, as a means to bring images from outside into the hall, incorporating the everyday movement of passers-by. Layers of complexity were constructed using video capturing, pre-recorded and real-time projection, delay systems, and additional performance. Reflections of these layers into mirrors and use of multiple cameras and projectors generated added complexity, however the source was always the actual world just outside the windows. Covering the windows with translucent film or blackout material the room was converted to a screenic-space which portrayed the outside world within, or played the outside back again through the windows in a reversal process. We thus created two examples of a mirrored world, both highly engaging and also confusing to witness. we experimented with creating pinhole camera and camera obscura effects inside a blacked-out building. This was achieved installing black vinyl in the windows and small screens were made of tracing paper. The looped image systems were created with video cameras focussed on these screens linked to projectors which repeated the image on other screens. The large mirrors in the space were used to multiply all these images. The total effect made it very difficult to understand that the source images were ongoing live unmediated images in real time! This is quite a beautiful installation to observe within, but was intended as a method of capturing the outside to be viewed again from the outside. Several peepholes were installed in other windows which allow a partial view of these screens, although it is not clear what the images are, they appear to be landscape paintings, quite cinematic and surprisingly colourful.