Photo of the small wooden movie theater and camera obscura seen from the exterior showing people entering and exiting.
ILOVIT THEATER
2012 // COPENHAGEN [DK]
Going to the movies is a known activity, your body knows it. You enter a black box, sit down, light is projected over your head to a screen to form a movie, a take on the world outside, movies are in a way projected realities. When the movie is over, there is no more, the black box is now just an empty box.
Movies are light projected across space manifesting itself on a vertical surface. I wanted to play with the role of the projection, of the light that enters the space.
A projector is placed in the back of the theater projecting digital rays of light onto a white painted surface hanging from the ceiling. Behind this surface, a small hole was cut and fitted with a lens. When the movies were over, the projection surface was moved to cover the projector hole and now the reflected rays of sunlight enter the space to show the world upside down on the screen. The theater becomes a camera.
The movie theater was a part of ILOVIT, curated by Jeppe Hein at Copenhagen Art Festival, Fall 2012.
Photo of the diagram hand drawing that the theater was built from. Indicated in dashed lines are the opposite film and camera obscura projection lines. When the movies were projected, a portable screen was placed in front of the camera obscura lens, between the film program the screen was placed over the projector and receiving the camera obscura projection.
View through the camera obscura lens to the exterior, where people are standing around in front of some diagrammatic wooden houses.
View of the exterior of the theater/camera obscura, with the Danish Parlement in the background.
Photo of the entrance, with a couple of people entering. In the front part of a sign saying “Biograf” (Cinema) and the camera obscura lens in visible in the center of the photo.
Photo of the reclaimed wood used in the primary construction.
Screening of a film, on the left the projection is bright in the dark space, on the right a few audience members are visible in the reflection of the movie light.
The camera obscura projection as seen inside the theater, a large group of people gathered in front of a group of diagrammatic wooden houses.
Front view of the theater at night, in the center the camera obscura lens lights up.