2009
Digital animation projected over suspended papier-mâché ball.
Animation constructed by René Weiskircher using POV-Ray, migrated to Quicktime playable on DVD.
Ball made from writing towards the artist’s doctoral exegesis, 800mm diameter.
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Black Sun 2009 Digital animation projected over suspended papier-mâché ball. Animation constructed by René Weiskircher using POV-Ray, migrated to Quicktime playable on DVD. Ball made from writing towards the artist’s doctoral exegesis, 800mm diameter. |
A digital animation of the earliest surviving photograph: Nicephore Niépce’s Point de Vue du Gras (1827). The digital sequence simulates changes in light and shade during the daylong exposure of Niépce’s image, at the original scene’s altitude, longitude, latitude and angle of view. In animating the photograph this way, I came to think of it as a ritual object, positioned within a long tradition of heliolatry that is based not upon the sun’s presumed fidelity, but it’s potential failure. Perhaps all photographs belong to this tradition. As the material trace of light through time, photography attests to truth’s inconstant shadow, and the persistence of faith within systems of knowledge that claim rationalism and positivism. The digital animation is projected past a large suspended papier-mâché ball that casts a shadow on the screen, a disparity in the window view like the hidden truth of desire.