a screen aglow (spectral contradictions), installation view
2023
projection, window screen
sunseen is a modular projection installation which uses iPhone footage of the sun and the video’s histogram in which the light values are graphically visualised, questioning what it means to perceive reality through the prism of image-capturing technology, and how is our perception of the world affected by its technical formulation. The project was developed in three parts: encrypt/ eclipse, a screen aglow, and spectral contradictions.
By projecting onto a household blind which acts as both a window and a screen, the extreme overexposure of the sun’s light is modulated and accentuated, seeking to highlight our perceptual bias by altering the way we have become accustomed to ‘seeing’. The function of the blind is to cover and diffuse; it is made analogous with the phone screen whose function is opposite - to reveal, and to capture. Both screens unite in the notion that in order to see the world better we need to obscure it. Augmentation of sight in favour of vision.
The presentation of these elements in the installation, interlinked and overlaid, questions the illusory nature of ‘seeing’, and therefore perceiving reality, in line with Plato’s allegory of the cave, or a hazy hint of it in our contemporary digital milieu.
encrypt/eclipse, [09:18min], installation composite video still
2023
a screen aglow, installation view
RCA Mediaworks, 2023
a screen aglow (spectral contradictions)
2023
sunseen, [09:18], video still
2023
© Sara Christova, 2024