This project continued the cross examination and inter-operation of moving image formats. Moreover, the project extended this exploration by seeking to investigate the contemporary ubiquity of imagery which results from the increasing accessibility of digital cameras and interconnected social media platforms. My previous installations Piccadilly Circus (2015) and Camera/Projector(2014) had been fairly simplistic in their intersection of analogue and digital formats, dividing a projection frame between both simultaneously. So I felt that, to overcome these limitations, further experimentation between the formats would be helpful in understanding the ways that they transform light on screen. With this project, I decided to project both formats in a shared frame again, but rapidly alternating them to elicit a new type of inter-operation between moving image technologies.

I was attracted to the figure drawing class as a frame of reference for two primary reasons. Firstly, the visual qualities of figure drawing felt like an aesthetically vibrant and engaging subject to explore with each format. Secondly, I felt that the process of drawing - or mark making - as shown through participants of the class would add a layer of critique to the representational qualities of moving imagery, forging an underlying analysis between the anachronistic forms of media that constitute the installation and the processes they depict. I considered many different methods to trigger the alternations between projection formats, but ultimately settled on using data driven by hashtags featured on the online platform Instagram. Incorporating this live element in the project was intended to foreground the mass exchange of imagery occurring online, making the timeline of the projected content unpredictable and continuously changing. Hence, this element dealt with image technologies in a way I had not previously investigated in my practical experimentation, allowing me to reveal the systems which self-perpetuate and control the orchestration of light in the dissemination of moving imagery.

Building on the approach that I had developed during the production of Camera/Projector, I employed comparable digital and analogue capture mechanisms. To achieve a higher image quality than in the previous projects, however, I worked with Super-16mm film using an Aaton LTR camera in conjunction with the Blackmagic Pocket Camera. I was keen to employ Super-16mm and a larger digital sensor for this project, in order to reveal more of the texture and unique qualities of each medium, which wouldn’t have been as visible on smaller formats. I also matched the optics between the two cameras using Helios 58mm lenses adapted to the PL and MFT mounts respectively. During production, the Blackmagic camera was mounted to the top of the Aaton, above the film plane, and framing was adjusted for every shot to ensure they were both closely matched.

Although all of the content was captured simultaneously on both formats, the exhibition of this project took inspiration from Piccadilly Circus and divided the shots, so that audiences would be encouraged to look between formats. I chose to only include Super-16mm close-up shots, which featured details of the model straining as he held his pose. By contrast, I used digital shots that only featured the class and their drawing process through a mixture of compositions. This was intended to give an impression of the overall activity though an intersection of the two formats.

To trigger each projector, I used a Raspberry Pi single board computer. The 16mm projector was kept threaded and turned on, so that using a radio frequency plug socket to regulate the power supply to the machine would enable me to start or stop the imagery. A digital short throw projector was controlled directly via the HDMI interface of the Raspberry Pi. I wrote a simple code using the Python programming language to search Instagram’s application programming interface (API), checking for a specified series of hashtags. If the code found a new instance of any hashtags that I had designated to digital, it would trigger the digital projector; likewise, if it found a new instance of a hashtag designated to analogue, then it would trigger the 16mm projector. 

To help audiences understand the technological system that was involved in this project, I displayed each new hashtag that my code found, as well as the total number of times it had been used online, on a small LCD display placed between the two projectors. My choice of hashtags related to the respective online communities on Instagram, which can broadly be divided into photographers using digital as opposed to film formats in their work. In choosing the specific tags, I intended to highlight a discrepancy between the fetishisation of analogue processes and the dissemination of images amidst this digital online network.