We are delighted to announce Nic Sandiland, artist and co-founder of creative production company Flexer&Sandiland, as our Inspace Artist-in-Residence this June. The focus of Sandiland’s residency will be on An Obscure Camera, an interactive moving image installation, incorporating a live camera feed, to explore notions of ‘following’, ‘public space’, ‘the everyday’ and the ‘camera’s gaze’.

First staged in Brighton Dome in 2023 as work in progress, during this residency in Inspace, Sandiland will explore collaborations and connections with researchers at the Institute for Design Informatics and the University’s wider community, to further develop this concept and prototype, towards a subsequent public launch later this year.

Through this Inspace Residency, Sandiland will spend the week testing and developing the current prototype:

‘It is a pleasure to have InSpace host and facilitate the ongoing development of An Obscure Camera. Not only does this help further develop our universites partnership, but it also provides a much-needed hub for transdisciplinary collaboration, drawing together expertise from the arts, technology, academic and cultural networks in a versatile and accommodating environment.’

Nic Sandiland

At the heart of this work is a sense of liveness, liveliness and embodiment, explored by Sandiland, by inviting visitors and viewers to participate in and interact with a live video feed, from the street right outside of Inspace, capturing passersby as they go about their daily activities. This live feed Sandiland playfully masks to create ‘portholes’ which allow the underlying image of the street scene to show through at various points, enabling installation viewers to choose to reveal any part of the projection they find interesting, and to reflect on what they choose to follow and what it feels like to do so. 

The intention of this work is to encourage members of the public to take a more critical perspective on the use and processing of their data in public contexts, potentially providing significant benefits to their ongoing understanding and engagement with other forms of public surveillance.  

This Artist-in-Residence is supported by Middelsex University and the Institute for Design Informatics 

Important notice: This work involves the temporary installation of a street facing camera in the window of Inspace, which captures a live feed of passersby. Footage from this camera feed is being used as the input for the installation but none of the data is recorded or stored

Access the Data Protection Impact and Legitimate Interest Assessments here for more information.

If you have any feedback, questions or concerns about his project, please email: designinformatics@ed.ac.uk 

Nic Sandiland is a UK based artist working across installation, performance, and film.  
 
Through his work, Nic seeks to re-enliven the body, revisiting and revaluing the viewer’s actions through their innate physical presence. To do this, his work has drawn on cinematic techniques such as slow motion and moving camera mechanisms and, more recently, machine vision, LiDAR, and robotics. 

Nic has made work in London, Europe and Southeast Asia and has presented at theatres, art galleries, and many unusual venues. His film work has been shown worldwide and has been broadcast on UK TV (Channel 4).