“Sun Mapping”
Title:
- Sun Mapping
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Filmmaker, Video Artist, or Animator(s):
Symposium:
Venue(s):
Artist Statement:
Sun Mapping is an experimental video that animates the pathway of the sun juxtaposed with imagery of natural specimens collected from around a coastal setting. The project, a unique merging of analog photography and digital processes, is a poetic exploration of the symbiotic relationship between the oceanfront landscape, its ecosystem, and the greater cosmos.
For this project, pinhole cameras (made from soda cans, cookie tins, and other small containers) capture the path of the rising and setting sun over time, with exposures that last from a few hours up to a year. These solargraphs merge with other pinhole photographs of natural and found samples collected from around the seashore. The video unfolds like an animated painting, moving between the abstract and the representational, where imprints of sand appear like stars, amoeba-like creatures burrow themselves into an obscure background, seashells float in water, and horizontal shapes rise and fall to echo the movement of waves. Here, relationships surface between time and space, light and dark, and the micro and macro, as the sun traces across the screen like a drawing in motion. These marks made by sunlight also allude to coordinates on a map, the movement of water, weather patterns, or a diagram of the cosmos.
An original musical score which includes recordings from the natural environment accompanies the video.
