2005-7

An online project timecoding landscape commissioned by Horsecross and Film and Video Umbrella for the launch of Threshold artspace and the opening of Perth’s new concert hall.

click here to launch website

In September 2005, a webcam was placed overlooking Loch Faskally, Pitlochry, Scotland hosted by the Fisheries Research Services Freshwater Laboratory. The webcam was programmed to record images a pixel a second, so that a whole image was built up of individual pixels collected over 21.33 hours and transmitted live via the internet. Each image was collected from top to bottom and left to right in horizontal bands continuously.

The result is Glenlandia, a series of gradually unfolding, classically romantic landscape images harvested and archived over the course of the year.
The work is intended to be slow, a reflection on the ever increasing speeds we demand from the internet. It encodes the landscape over time, with different tonal horizontal bands recording fluctuations in light and movement throughout the day and with broad bands of black depicting nighttime. Stray pixels appear in the image where a bird, person, car or other unidentifiable object may have passed in front of the webcam as the pixel was captured.

Glenlandia is a companion piece to Fenlandia. Both works address the relationship between the natural and the manmade, and our perception of landscape and technology over time. Poised between the still and the moving image, the lens and the pixel, these works explore how images can be coded and decoded using both light and time as building blocks for the work.

Glenlandia exists concurrently as a website; a networked full screen live transmission, and as a series of archival digital inkjet prints from the archive.

Exhibitions include: Timeless, York Quay Art Centre, Harbourfront, Toronto 2006; REMOTE, Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart, Tasmania, 2006; Digital Aesthetic 2, Harris Gallery, Preston 2007 and Outlook Express(ed), Oakville Galleries, Ontario, Canada, 2007

A set of Glenlandia limited edition prints were published in 2006 by Horsecross and ARC Projects, Edinburgh/Sofia. Currently being exhibited at Threshold, Perth.

click here to launch the Glenlandia website