Monzen

One of multiple projects to grow out of the Guggenheim research period and related travel to Japan is Monzen which developed from a series of experimentations with a digital SLR camera. By removing the lens and replacing it with a body cap with a pinhole lens drilled into it, I found the ability to create digital pinhole photographs.  My primary interest in this process is based on the understanding that by boosting the ISO (virtual film speed) on the camera, I can achieve a very short exposure time for a pinhole image. Making these adjustments, I am able to shoot properly exposed pinhole images with a shutter speed of 1/30 of a second or less, eliminating motion blur. This technique allows for multiple pinhole images to be shot in rapid succession and then combined in sequence to create a stop frame animation.

Monzen utilizes this process of pinhole animation. While in Japan, I completed a number of photo shoots in and near bamboo forests with the resulting images stitched together to make animated loops. The raw images for these particular animations were created using a body cap with a matrix of four pinhole lenses, leading to individual shots with overlapping imagery. Inconsistencies in the size of the hand-drilled pinhole lenses result in slightly different rates of exposure for different parts of the image with the pleasing byproduct of an artificial horizon line that appears periodically across the center of the video. Post-production work allowed for minor adjustments in contrast and for a mirroring of the imagery for multi-channel projection

The mirroring effect parallels Rorschach inkblots, images that potentially reveal more about the viewer than that which is being viewed. A second layer of interpretation is embedded in the formal characteristics of the video. The forced symmetry implies a vertical line created by moving the typically unquestioned bounding edge of video frame to the center. That centerline indicates an un-seeable non-space that the image moves in and out of.

These animations have existed as single channel and dual channel projections in conjunction with larger installations, as well as stand-alone videos with custom monitors. A two channel projected version paired with the audio composition Lyra-8 was installed for my solo exhibition at the CICA Museum in South Korea in 2018. That exhibition led to my inclusion in their publication CICA Art Now 2019.