OBSCURA_ [12/29/2020]: Obscured Omniscience is a series of devices that explore image and the experience of “seeing” through “capture”. Devices are deployed on site and encode immaterial forces such as light and wind into images and video through analogue means and filters. As of now, three devices have been designed, “Obscura Unit 01 (Kingdom Seeker)” and “Obscura Unit 02 (Terra Orbiter) and “Obscura Unit 03 (Horizons). The essay written below was written to reflect the thesis of Unit_01 “Kingdom Seeker”, Unit_02 “Terra Orbiter” is an exploration that occured to me towards the end of Unit-01s production. These investigations consider what some refer to as Camera-less Photography, my interest in such was triggered by a deep curiosity in the Light-Space Modulator [1921-1930] by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. At the time of being introduced to this precedent, I had just moved to Cambridge, MA and was able to acquaint it in the collections of the Harvard Art Museum. A week later I was given a tour of MIT Architecture and got introduced to the work of György Kepes and his creation of The Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS). At this point I felt like I was going to explode and felt a deep insecurity as a designer. To build off of these precedents I realized my work was going to need to advance their practices and “develop” further upon them to develop the process into a built object. It wasn’t until I read Transparency by Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky that I began to compare and understand these images as a form of transparency, both a practice of condensing and superimposition of images on a 2D plane and the condensing of spatial experience in a perceived reality. For months I researched Mirrors and Lenses, light, practical effects, optical effects, etc to design these devices. These devices below are experiments that have amounted to what I consider to be my personal thesis, a hobby but also a deeply passionate exploration of spectacle and fantasy.
Thesis [The Obscura]
In the pursuit of a transparent reality, one must forfeit the right to rationalize what they perceive, comprehend and deem as truth in reality. A transparent reality is not far removed from the reality we experience, but an isolated moment that the creator designs as a catalyst to evoke interpretation of “a moment” for the voyeur. In an attempt to access this realm, the device is designed to remove the operator’s [user’s] sense of space and pays no respect or regard for spatial awareness through the flattening of depth and perspective. Based on the formal aesthetics of a telescope, the device is in fact used for “seeing” but not through magnification in seeking fidelity but through a search for ambiguity defined by the distortion and blurring of spatial depth. With all sense of space and depth removed or distorted, the generation of a 2D image on a receiving surface in the device presents the vast field of sight in one digestible image. This desire to distort depth is a statement on perception and the power of sight as a sense that informs and communicates spatial readings/awareness. The isolation of sight as a constant variable can be used to measure the tolerance for interpretation of image. Designed in a way that prescribes a creature like quality to its stature, Obscured Omniscience manifests itself as an omniscient being with the ability to see and interpret. Through an intentional rejection of various senses by solely capturing image with no recording of touch, sound, etc. This mediation results in a 2D image that is output by the device. The clear and explicit depiction of depth consolidated in a 2D image allows for a controlled viewing, a constant variable. This biased intervention of sight creates a beauty from the naive, a reality lacking certainty, offering lost in the muse of ambiguity and contradictory dimension.
In totality, Obscured Omniscience features six tubes that mediate viewer’s visual perception through analog means and optical effects. The tubes take in light and manipulate it; light enters as X and and is output as X’, X’ can be viewed by the user through a series of designated apertures in the tubes. Depending on the intent of deployment, Obscured Omniscience can be rigged to capture X’ through a series of 2D images and videos. The 12” tube houses a camera obscura that can be performed and will thus output an inverted “light impression” that may be recorded in photogram form. In some way, the ambiguous images can be read as rorschach images, demanding of various readings and interpretations. The 8” tube is a kaleidoscope that blurs the environment beyond the devices aperture, neglecting to acknowledge the concept of horizon and orientation through the mosaic layering of triangulated viewports. The 4” tubes are a compilation of visual filters.
“i-4”
