Tausend Augen
2007
Disposable cameras have long made a pact with the generic, a price that came with the promise to accommodate any visual situation that may arise. Embedded in each model, however, is a specific mode of capture, a biased filter for the production of images. Furthermore, due to this restricted mode of capture, cameras are generally used after seeing something, creating a breach between seeing and event. This project aims to exploit the dormant capacity of these machines for continuous seeing, no longer concerned with capturing events in the moment.
The simplest form of this machine is the lens, which focuses a view on a plane. The isolation of this mechanism is like the hunt for a cultured pearl: one has to pry open the camera's hard plastic body, discharge the capacitor, and peel back layer after layer of black plastic to reveal a small, shiny lens hugging the aperture. Once stripped of their accoutrements, the lenses admit a continuous view. This is the lens at its most natural: continuously open and uninhibited by a filter for story or event.
This screen prototype takes a view and splits it into many vignettes, sometimes allowing for the superposition of two different points of view. The screen’s two sides perform different functions: one collects the view with a series of small apertures (a piece of CNC-milled MDF with embedded disposable camera lenses), while the other carves out the conical light paths on their way to a frosted glass plane. The geometries of the two sides are thus constrained parametrically by the functions of admission and focus.
Tausend Augen was published in Pidgin 4.