Sustainable Cinema No. 1: The Image Mill

Sustainable Cinema No. 1: The Image Mill
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The Image Mill is a public sculpture that uses the force and beauty of falling water as the energy to create a moving picture.

As water falls over the giant wheel, a transmission assembly causes two disks to spin in opposite directions. On the interior disk are a series of animation frames painted onto glass; on the black outside disk, rotating in the opposite direction, are cut slits. As the wheel spins, the slits act as a shutter and the animation becomes visible…a movie plays in the falling water.

Sustainable Cinema is a series of kinetic public sculptures that merge natural power sources with early optical illusions to create a moving image. Nature is the power and the director of cinematography in each of the sculptures, which are designed to start a conversation about environmentally responsible media and a search for more sustainable solutions to power our emerging technologies.