LOOK
BOTH
WAYS
Euclidean space is defined by THREE dimensions. If we could see time as a dimension like any other, what would a tram moving through the city look like? What would we look like ourselves?
About a year ago Dr. Patrick Cavanagh suggested that we explore something called 'shutter-plane photography’ and try to adapt the technique to digital video for one of our ‘mirror’ installations. Our research has led us to an investigation - presented in the slideshow below - of a fascinating early photograph by Jacques Henri Lartigue. We are now working on the development of an ‘anorthoscopic’ mirror installation - described at the end of the slideshow - for the Hall of Mirrors exhibition.
DR. PHIL KELLY and DR. David Monaghan FROM CLARITY visit the non-euclidean universe AT FARMLeigh
Time Slice
Interactive Video Installation
Look Both Ways
HD film
The Mystery of the Slanting Car
Slideshow
2012
Commissioned by the Railway Procurement Agency.
Extract from ‘Look Both Ways’ Right screen
Extract from ‘Look Both Ways’ Left screen
Look Both Ways is inspired by Jacques-Henri Lartigue’s world-renowned early photograph, Une Delage au grand prix de l'Automobile-Club de France de 1912, and examines visual transformations perceived while moving through space, much as one might experience while on a moving tram or train.
Lartigue’s photograph of a moving car was considered a failure until it was exhibited for the first time in 1963, but is now a seminal photograph in the history of photography. It shows a speeding motorcar, but strangely, while the racing car tilts forward the pedestrians are all tilting backwards.
Look Both Ways takes beautifully filmed sequences of Dublin from the moving Luas tramway and treats them in a similar way to Lartigue’s famous technique. The result is an extraordinary “graph” of the city, a cross-section along both Luas lines simultaneously that captures and expresses motion in a strongly visual way, allowing us to see the city as we have never seen it before. The installation is completed by an interactive element that allows the visitor to try out Lartigue’s distortions in real time, providing lots of fun for young visitors, and scientific and historic documentation explaining how the original distortion happened.