Pixelscape for Arts Council England, South East

2003

A permanent commission for Arts Council England South East’s headquarters in Brighton

Pixelscape for Arts Council South East observes the interior architecture and inhabitation of the Arts Council Brighton’s offices through a permanently installed pixellated time based lens.

Captured from left to right in horizontal rows from top to bottom of the image, every pixel in the image records a different moment – captured in real-time. Different tonal bands represent changes in light evolving horizontally across the image, with broad bands of black depicting nighttime and stray pixels appearing where a person or other object has passed through the image as the individual pixel was captured.

The image is collected at the rate of a pixel a second, the screen display updating continuously with each complete image representing the previous three and a half days of time – an ongoing time-coded record of the location, with people, light and movement represented as pixellated fragments, traced over time.

The camera view is changed at regular intervals with the continuously evolving image presented on a small portable flatscreen in the Arts Council South East Brighton office’s reception area.