Last week Jenny and I worked through the many and varied submissions for the open call and whittled them down to five. We were aiming for four, but that was just a number picked out the air and these felt like a good set, so five it is.
Here they are with a very brief summary of their idea.
Dolly Kershaw – augmenting the camera with mechanical devices so it can be controlled by the wind.
Gen Doy – a solo performance inside the camera using spoken word and song.
Matthew Gabrielli – a new play based on the history of the camera to be performed with / in it.
Michael Lightborne – an interactive installation on a traffic island.
Sophie Bullock – a video installation exploring the visual qualities of the camera.
Our aim is that, by letting these people use their camera to create new work, we can learn new things about the camera obscura as an artistic tool, the development of which pretty much stopped in the 19th century when the camera was co-opted by photography. We will therefore be documenting this entire process and sharing it with you all, and hope that our findings will inform how we use the camera in 2016 and onwards.
In order to do this properly, though, we need to obtain funding and an application to the Arts Council's Grants For The Arts fund is in progress. If this is successful work will start in October!
(Pic at top – Dolly Kershaw's wind-powered cine-camera.)