Oneiric

A series of digital video 'pepper's ghost' projections on glass and acrylic spheres.

Oneiric was devised as a series of vignettes set in the post-industrial Thames River and estuary. Presented through a reimagining of the 19th-century theatre technique in combination with custom-devised contemporary technology, these modest structures represent a futile attempt to capture and claim the sublime.

This part of Essex and Kent is more commonly defined through its melancholia than its beauty, but Cotterrell attempted to capture his love of the landscape through the use of spherical cameras, small boat journeys and experimental fabrication. The artworks represent the movement through a landscape marked by its previous utility and defined through its expansive skies. The motion of the boat and waves is manually removed, and the speed of the transient view is reduced by 30%. The ephemeral product of these processes is then projected within the fragile, light-dependent, lanterns of holographically coated film. 

The artworks were named with the word 'Oneiric' followed by six digits, referencing their latitude and longitude. They are presented as testaments to the resilient beauty of human failure and the impossibility of the heroic desire to capture, record, and recall sublime experience.

 

 

Materials:

Glass sphere, laminated holographic film, screen and media player