Join us for An Obscure Camera an interactive moving image installation where you the viewer become the performer and conductor of your own experience.

An Obscure Camera

Conceived and Created by Nic Sandiland

The fascination with Camera Obscura has captured audience imagination drawing people worldwide from Victorian times to present day. The spectacle of entering a dark room through which to witness and actively peer out to the surrounding landscape is both theatrically enticing and technically mysterious. An Obscure Camera develops this form for a 21st-century context through a physically interactive installation. We enter a large dark space and are immersed by a multitude of ornate Rococo frames projected onto the surrounding walls. Each frame contains a close-up view of the live outdoor environment outside of the building. As we walk around, the frames move with us, matching our speed and direction. New subjects enter and pass through the frames as our viewpoint changes. We can scan, track, and follow different features in the outdoor spaces, including its inhabitants, through our motion within the space.

An Obscure Camera gives visitors the agency to physically enact the choices made by ubiquitous AI algorithms that observe, scrutinise, and categorise our every move. In contrast to the minimal actions of clicking a mouse or pressing a key, visitors have to move their whole body through the installation in order to ‘follow’ those outside. In this way, participants not only ‘embody the AI’, but are confronted, first-hand, with the associated ethical and social implications of their choices/actions.

Exhibition Details

Date: Fri – Thurs | 22-28 Nov 2024 (closed Tues/Thurs)
Time: 10:00 – 17:00 | Free/Drop-In
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB

Artist Talk and Preview Event

Join us in Inspace for this Artist Talk, Audience Q&A followed by a preview of the installation. Join us for this unique opportunity to hear more about the work and to get a sneak preview and experience of the work.

Date: Wed 20 Nov 2024
Time: 17:00 – 19:00 | Free/Ticketed
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB

About the Artist

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).

His work has been commissioned by organisations such as: the Royal Festival Hall, the Barbican Arts Centre, Sadler’s Wells Theatre and The Brighton Festival and he is a regular collaborator with choreographers Yael Flexer and Rosemary Lee.  

He has also worked as an interactive technology designer with: Station House Opera, Blast Theory, Gary Stevens and Imogen Stidworthy. He is also a producer and editor for Extant Theatre, the UK’s leading professional performing arts company of visually impaired artists and theatre practitioners. 

Nic has taught workshops on digital technology and dance around the World including: Bangalore, India and Seoul, South Korea. He also taught video production for 10 years at London Contemporary Dance School (MA dance for camera) and is currently a senior lecturer in fine art at Middlesex University. In 2022 Nic completed his PhD on agency within interactive installation. 

To find out more about Sandilands’ work visit www.flexerandsandiland.com/works/

Image Credit: An Obscure Camera by Nic Sandiland.

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