Environmental Media Studies

Dome Projections
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Moving Movie #1
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Environmental Media Studies explored new ways of representing landscape and place.

Moving Movie #1 (1977) was an inexpensive modest study made at MIT. I was obsessed with why movie cameras move and movie projectors don’t, and filmed the Boston landscape with a Super8 movie camera mounted on a slowly rotating turntable. The film is projected using a continuous loop projector mounted on the same slowly rotating turntable, using a translucent cylindrical screen so one can see on both sides. The result is a very natural looking "flashlight effect," with the frame rotating around the screen in sync with the filmed material. As the projected image rotates around the screen, direction and spatiality is maintained.

Dome Projections (1978) was driven by the urge to see if an "inside out" panorama would "read" to the human eye. Images were recorded with a Nikon camera fitted with a 180 degree fisheye lens. The camera and lens were then converted into a projector pointing upward, and a 36 inch diameter frosted acrylic dome was placed on top. The fisheye image appeared as a "northern hemisphere" to be viewed from the outside. So rather than being inside the panorama looking out, viewers were outside looking in.

Moving Movie #2 (1979) was an attempt to record the camera movement during filming, then use the data to control the movement of the projected image. The result was a movie that could move around a space in any direction, based upon the original camera movement.